|
|
 |
|
 |
Member since: July 27, 2010
|
|
|
|
Ted Rall is so bizarre. Yet, I think I almost have him figured out. Almost. I've narrowed him down to one of two agendas. Either way explains the method to his madness.
First he says that the federal government needs to be scrapped before we can start over and rebuild it in his glorious image of what it should be. But he doesn't mention Ron Paul at all, despite the fact that dismantling the federal government is just what the man wants to do. I mean, if you want to dismantle something, and someone else wants to dismantle something, wouldn't that put the two of you on the same side, and mean you should work together? But no. Apparently Rall is afraid that once we get it dismantled, Ron Paul will say, 'See how much better off we are without it?' And people will.
Then he says the following week that Romney, Gingrich and Paul are interchangeable. So, Romney says we are ordained by God to kick the world's ass, Gingrich says we should be living in a police state, and Rall can't see the difference between them and the man who voted against the PATRIOT Act. Well, Rall, just because you wish the Democrats had produced someone with sense enough to vote against the PATRIOT Act doesn't mean that this other guy with an R next to his name doesn't deserve credit for doing so.
And now he admits Paul is 'the weird Republican', but refuses to admit that he's different in any way other than being 'weird'. Even though he addresses our economic issues and our lack of upward mobility in this nation the proven way--by cutting the centralized power of the federal government and making corporations that would buy influence go to the trouble to buy it in fifty-seven territorial and state legislatures instead. Ron Paul would let enterprise thrive by eliminating the federal regulations that force small businesses to buy the same dozen lawyers that corporations have to buy these days--and can more easily afford. Simple. Also effective.
I can only see two possible motivations for Rall's campaign to paint Paul as weird, yet identical to the other Republicans in the field. One is, he's carrying water for the corporations, and so he doesn't want us to look at an anti-corporatist any more than Rush Limbaugh does. The other is that he actually wants to have a fat government in Washington because he's hoping we make him Czar Ted the First.
Either way, I don't think I want to play, Ted. No offense.
|
|
|
Report this comment |
|
|
|
|
|
P.S. And I'm extremely gratified to see Tulsa Transit scrupulously using their new hybrid buses on the 251 FastTrack route. Never mind that they have all those batteries on the roof, making them awfully topheavy for those curves at each end of the Broken Arrow Expressway. And never mind that their twelve foot high profiles makes them the least aerodynamic of all buses, a condition that manifests itself most in the highway speeds that the 251 almost exclusively operates at.
No, the most astoundingly wise part of all is that the hybrid, as everyone with a lick of sense knows, gains efficiency in spite of itself by reclaiming braking energy and reusing it. And since the 251 sees an application of the brakes twice or maybe three times per expressway jaunt, I expect figures will show that these units won't need new service brake shoe replacements until eight or nine years after they're retired and scrapped.
I'm so pleased to know that, no matter how many areas of life the government insists on taking over, there still isn't a single lick of sense to be found in a position of authority outside of the private sector.
|
|
|
Report this comment |
|
|
|
|
|
Well, had a fun evening. Got out of the old second shift sweatshop and rushed to catch the 9:32 East Nightline--the one running clockwise. I was right on time but it was nowhere to be seen. So, having nothing better to do than to get myself a little exercise, I took a little stroll.
I wandered along the route for nearly two hours, feeling like a lost tribe only smaller, and finally succombed to by blisters and had a nice little rest at Eleventh and Kingston. And, presently, I was rewarded by the sight of the Nightline rounding the corner at Eleventh and Sheridan at 11:42 p.m.
He was only two minutes ahead of, as they used to say in the railroad business, The Advertised at that point. But, apparently, he was early enough to have beaten all of the other second shift refugees, as he was running old L903 quite empty. And, apparently, he didn't consider himself early enough, because upon entering the westbound lanes of Old Route 66 he immediately tried to run the automobile in the right lane off of the road, and when he thought better of that, tried to out-drag it. Upon seeing me calmly waving like a semaphore, he graciously and to my undying devotion condescended to forfeit his drag race and stop for me.
He then did me a great favor. He took off down Eleventh like greased lightning, extending his commendable two minute lead on The Clock by enough to pass Yale at 11:45 and to cross Utica at 11:50, when he was supposed to be crossing Yale. He certainly succeeded in relieving us of the inconvenience of having to stop for other passengers, instead leaving them struggling to their stops unfortunately over-secure in their belief that Tulsa buses NEVER run early, and got me home only an hour and fifty-three minutes late rather than a full two hours.
One wonders why they don't just run the Nightline in the Afternoon...
|
|
|
Report this comment |
|
|
|
|
|
Well, I had a fine adventure on Tulsa Transit this morning. I got on a 105, bus number 2015, which said route 101 over the windshield. Fortunately, I was on Peoria, not downtown, so I wasn't fooled--yet. Then I got on a bus marked 251 Fasttrack downtown, and it proceeded to cross Cincinnati on Second and turn north on Detroit. Now, this would either mean it was taking a major detour--like a different highway--to get to the 'midtown' station out on the east side, or it was really a 203 masquerading as a 251. Either way, it wasn't going to help me catch the 318, which runs about once every hour and a half, so I was without any hope of making my appointment. I got off the bus and walked back to the Denver Ave. station, and in came a 105 South which would in theory get me back home, with a dollar and a half and an hour's worth of time wasted.
But I was in no mood to take chances--especially since it was bus number 2013. So, I asked the driver if this was really the 105 South. He nodded. I then told him I had been on a 105 claiming to be a 101, and a 203 masquerading as a 251, and joked that it seemed to be April Fool's Day and maybe he didn't get the memo. He promptly threatened to throw me off the bus if I didn't shut up. So I sat down and shut up. He then proceeded to turn right at Second and Boulder from other than the right lane, and stay in other than the right lane until he had bypassed the stop by the Hyatt and made an elderly woman walk halfway to City Hall to get on. Shortly afterwards he lied to a man on Second east of Elgin about whether he could catch the 210 there--the poor guy may still be waiting for that bus as you read this--griped at a woman for using a marked and shelter-equipped stop in a construction zone, and let a man on with a lit cigar. Good enough for government work, I guess.
Also good enough for government work was the Dallas consultant who told the city a while back that the railroad line in the middle of the Broken Arrow Expressway would make a fine light rail commuter line, and recommended that a park and ride lot be set up at either 42nd and Memorial or 36th and Sheridan. They got millions and millions of dollars for this. Service cutbacks occured shortly afterwards, and nothing more in the way of light rail development has come along. Millions of dollars to Dallas when any idiot who was actually born and raised in Tulsa could tell you that the same rail line crosses 51st Street right underneath Highway 169, and a park and ride lot at that location could actually share a traffic light with the 169 on- and off-ramps.
Mass transit is a laudable goal. But it's abundantly clear that if this city is ever to have a viable system, we're going to have to make up our minds that mass transit is much TOO GOOD for government work.
|
|
|
Report this comment |
|
|
|
|
|
Well, now, what a commentary. First we get a 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Republican Galaxy' which invited me to get my towel and tour the Grand Old Party in the modern day. Hoo boy, neocons trying to explain how Dubya got both our fists and both our feet in the Tar Baby Wars, libertarians coming home to roost, evangelicals realizing that libertarians don't lie as much as neocons, moderates realizing that libertarians are right when we say decentralization of power will cause power-brokering corporations to have to buy up fifty state legislatures instead of one massive federal government, and that will be harder--what fun! But no. Grab your towel was no reference to Douglas Adams, but a warning that we weren't going to tour the Republican galaxy at all, but instead be treated to a Hitchhiker's Guide to Democratic Crying Towels.
And the mantra is, conservatives and Republicans are all the same. Then comes the head of NPR, right on message, saying we're all the same. Every single registered Republican is exactly identical to our lowest common denominator. So, I am grateful to Mr. Hunt for his insightful satire. God couldn't have fashioned a more perfect satarist than this wonderful man.
All Republicans agree about freedom of information and federal standing armies vs. state militias. I will concede that the day Republicans fail to march in lockstep on these issues will be the day pigs fly. By this, of course, I mean that back in 1909 when J.T.C. Moore-Brabazon attached a basket to his Short/Wright biplane and put a piglet in it, Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moosers quarreled on these subjects with Harding, Coolidge and the crowd who would jump start the economic boom of the Roaring Twenties after the war by suddenly and unceremoniously ending the wartime socialism. And when refrigerated transport planes first appeared half a century ago to transport frozen pork, the Nixonians and the Goldwater Wing quarreled over these issues. And even now, as undoubtedly there's a pot-bellied pig in a doggie carrier in the belly of some jetliner somewhere, neocons and libertarians disagree vehemently and in public. Such a rich way to point out how silly the current rhetoric really is.
Then to pronounce us universally evil, and then turn around and chide us not to sow discord among our American bretheren. A finer irony I cannot imagine. Truly, Mr. Hunt, your satire is as rich, fine and subtle as anyone could hope for. I think you have done more to prevent mischief and turn aside the false witnessing than you know. Keep up the good work!
|
|
|
Report this comment |
|
Read All 12 Comments »
|
|
|
|
