I’ve lived in Seattle for twenty years and I still love it here. It’s known by various nick names: Jet City (because of all the Boeing jets built here) and The Emerald City (because of all the greenery). Personally, I prefer Drip City because it’s more accurate, thanks to all the rain and the fact that at last count there were at least 1,542 Starbucks locations in Seattle (and that’s just in downtown).

For many people in the eastern two-thirds of the country, Seattle is this mysterious, faraway place they only know about from Sleepless in Seattle. But there is so much more to this city than a spunky Meg Ryan (although let’s not understate Meg’s importance).

Let me debunk a few myths about my adopted city:

• Myth: It rains here all the time. That is simply not true. The weather here is gloriously sunny and mild with zero humidity – if you happen to be here in August. Otherwise, yeah, it does rain a fair bit.

• Myth: The sun vanishes for nine months of the year, from October through June. Again, utter hyperbole. There are many winters where you may see the sun for long stretches of time – usually during the second week of August.

• Myth: It is so damp here that the roofs of most houses are covered in thick moss. Actually, it’s more like a light dusting. And this also goes for the dusting of moss you’ll typically find on our lawns, driveways, patio furniture, and any toddler who has been left out in the backyard for more than 45 minutes.

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Not long ago, I took on those left-wing tree huggers in my insightful commentary titled The Myth of Global Warming.  I thought I had shut those nutcases up once and for all.  Seems I was wrong (go figure!).  Now they are up a tree again, this time barking about our over-dependence on oil.

These bicycle brains warn that the US has become overly dependent on oil from countries that don’t particularly like us, which puts our national security at risk.  Since when does the USA care about winning a popularity contest? Someone has to be the world’s policeman, and policemen don’t become cops to be liked. Some Chicken Littles are panicking that we might run out of oil in the next fifty years –  like I’m gonna be around to care.  And let’s not forget those socialist sympathizers yammering on about “rich oil executives getting paid too much!” Wah, wah, wah!  Enough with all the whining.

Let’s take a look at some of these latest ridiculous, alarmist claims.

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As a professional journalist, it is my job to stay informed about important news stories and trends, so you don’t have to. This week, as I have done every year since this blog’s inception in 1975, I take stock in the people and events that shaped our world over the past 365 days.

[Editor’s note: For those of you following the Jewish calendar, look for my special Rosh Hashanah “You won’t believe what the Goyim world did to our people this past year” Edition, to be published at sundown on September 28, 2011, the start of the Jewish New Year. – TEJ]

Consider this my Holiday gift to you – a week late, sorry. Blame it on the Post Office. Here is the annual View from the Bleachers’ Year in Review – 2010 Edition, or as I like to call it VFTBYIR-2010E, for short.

Oh, just one thing: Pay no attention to the subtle and repeated placement of gratuitous links to previous VFTB articles scattered throughout this week’s post. My tech person told me search engines like that sort of stuff. Hope you don’t mind. Let’s get started, shall we?

January: Avatar smashes box office records as the biggest grossing movie of all time (not to be confused with Cannibal Holocaust, which gets VFTB’s vote for grossest movie of all time).  Thanks to Avatar’s amazing 3D effects and unprecedented profits, Hollywood begins unleashing a tidal wave of 3D films for 2010, including Alice in Wonderland, Toy Story 3, Rocky XXXVII and Oscar-buzz, early odds-on favorite for Best Picture, Jack Ass 3D (right).

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I’ll admit it. There are many mysteries in this world I will never be able to grasp. Like, when did time begin? How big is the universe? Is there life after death? Why does a loving God let good people suffer? How can I get the flashing “12:00” on my VCR set to the correct time?

And this week I find myself confronted with yet another unfathomable enigma: Why does the entire state of Montana hate me?

That’s right. I am convinced Montana hates me. And I have absolutely no idea what I have done to offend it. You see, I periodically check Google Analytics to see where traffic to my web site comes from. I have had visitors from every continent (except Antarctica).

I have had web site visitors from Tanzania, Malaysia, Indonesia, New Zealand, Belarus, China, South Korea, Ghana, and just about every nation in Europe. I’ve had visitors come all over – from Maui to Moscow, from Singapore to Sao Paolo. In the past year I have had at least one visitor from every single state in the USA…. except for… you guessed it – Montana. Not one visit from anyone in Montana in 12 months – nada –– zippo – zilch – bupkes.

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April 22, 2010 was Earth Day. But it was not a very good day for the earth – or for that matter, for BP. That’s the day the an explosion toppled over BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and the blowout preventer failed, causing the earth to begin leaking thousands of gallons of oil from 5000 feet below the surface of the Gulf. In a bit of irony, the original Earth Day was April 22, 1970, thirty years ago to the day of this year’s spill, begun in large measure in response to another oil spill caused from a blowout of a deep sea drill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California.

Last week, the Gulf oil spill disaster surpassed the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill as the worst environmental disaster in American history. BP (the initials, which formerly stood for British Petroleum, have been changed to stand for “Best Polluter”) has taken full and complete responsibility for the oil spill. And by “full and complete responsibility”, BP CEO Tony Hayward went on to clarify that the Deepwater oil rig was owned and operated by Transocean, which, he went on to say was responsible for the safety on the oil rig. According to The London Telegraph, Hayward further clarified BP’s full and complete responsibility by saying, “This was not our accident. This was not our drilling rig. This was not our equipment. It was not our people, our systems or our processes. This was Transocean’s rig. Their systems. Their people. Their equipment.”

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What is all this fuss about global warming? Oooh, look at the lonely polar bear swimming in open Arctic waters so far from land. How will it eat? Isn’t that soooo sad. That heart-breaking polar bear was undoubtedly filmed in a back lot at Universal Studios. Two minutes later they probably fed him a nice Caribou and a baby narwhal for dessert.

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