HULK SMASHED
woo-hoo! more R-5 trains!!!
Shazam!
Goddammit!
'mornin'
Bob Herbert on Ted Kennedy today:
Which brings me back to my dad. Chester Herbert was a tough guy, in the best sense, who grew up in the Depression and worked hard as hell to raise a successful family in the postwar years. He wasn’t ready to die when the doctors and the charts and the X-rays said he was supposed to.
He fought the cancer, struggled through radiation and chemotherapy, and lived a dozen years after that awful day in the doctor’s office.
The press will tell you that this is Senator Kennedy’s toughest fight. I don’t even know if that’s true. Who knows what the toughest fight has been for someone named Kennedy? This is a guy who has experienced every kind of horror, who went down in a plane, who had to fight back after Chappaquiddick, who has had two kids stricken with cancer, and on and on. So who knows?
All I know is that the show’s not over until the curtain comes down, the lights go out and everybody has left the theater.
We’re not there yet. Hang in there, Ted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/2...herbert.html?
hp
Please read the whole thing.
My favorite story today:
A Tuesday fundraiser headlined by President Bush for U.S. Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign is being moved out of the Phoenix Convention Center.
Sources familiar with the situation said the Bush-McCain event was not selling enough tickets to fill the Convention Center space, and that there were concerns about more anti-war protesters showing up outside the venue than attending the fundraiser inside.
Another source said there were concerns about the media covering the event.
http://www.bizjournals.com/phoen...ml?
surround=lfn
Attaturk: now that went down well...
What if the REpublicans gave a presidential campaign and nobody came except Joe Lieberman?
Atrios,
I learned yesterday that I can take public transit to and from work for $20 week.
32.50 for a weekly transit pass here.
unlimited travel: bus, subway, streetcar, turtle.
you save buying a monthly pass but then again, if you lose it...
Wilmington is just now getting around to offering bus service on weekends.
Well, this is pretty limited time-wise, but it's pretty good otherwise.
When you reach 65, you become an "honored citizen" on Transit here, and the monthly pass becomes very inexpensive even if you don't travel often. With the adult pass, you really have to be a commuter to make it worth it.
Wombat, Herbert is my always favorite, but connecting person to person like that, great.
The Times acknowledges on its front page today that people are noticing tha gas costs $4/gal:
Interviews with more than 70 people across the country suggested that the adjustments they were making, mental and otherwise, would last well beyond the summer. Americans have started trading their gas guzzlers for smaller cars, making fewer trips to the mall and, wherever possible, riding public transportation to work.
For years, it was not clear whether rising prices would ever cause Americans to use less gas. But a combination of record prices, the slowing economy and a tight credit market has beaten consumers down.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/2...s/24gas.html?
hp
Y'know what drives me crazy? That a certain class of economists will say that high prices are necessary to change behavior, that nothing else can do the job, that this is The Market Sorting Itself Out and all to the good. Me, I see it as a transparent failure of political, social and corporate leadership.
Pay to hear Stupid stumble through another speech about Hitler??
no thanks.
People here wear their transit passes in plastic sleeves on lanyards around their necks, like a corporate ID, sometimes.
"honored citizen"
I'm not big on euphemisms, but I kinda like that one.
Our universiity ID card gets you on all the local buses for free. Faculty, staff and students.
So yesterday, I came home on the bus that runs from BART to my bankrupt little burg, at the height of rush hour.
Normally, the roads are jammed anyway at that time, but with this being the beginning of Memorial Day weekend, there's a history of traffic nightmares at that time.
This time? Dead. Nothing. Clear sailing in all lanes.
Think that $4 a gallon gas had anything to do with it?
el: Herbert got it just right, I think, precisely because he been there done that. Kennedy's got a nasty disease with a shitty prognosis. But he's alive until he's dead. Those are two things that are simultaneously true and excruciatingly difficult to balance.
the Bush-McCain event was not selling enough tickets to fill the Convention Center space
meanwhile here they are closing down commencement to the public for the first time because obama is speaking at it; already this little town is FULL of people and they are expecting 25,000 at commencement (half of them reporters probably)
molly,
under 2 hours each way?
On the way home yesterday, most gas stations were $3.99 for regular and $4.99 for diesel.
What kills me is that we're paying all of that and almonst none is taxes to support infrastructure and public transit.
I remember when some candidate (John Anderson) proposed a 50 cent gas tax and was ridiculed and reviled. Things have certainly changed- now no one dares even to propose it
the 'transfer' piece of paper is a big stickler here.
people who buy individual tickets try to squeeze in a bit of shopping at transfer points to save paying a new ticket.
or get confused about directions and have to back track so end up one block away, etc...
the drivers are forced to either be 'merciful' or 'strict.'
there must be some way of solving this for everybody's advantage.
I watched video of Teddy sailing on his boat the day he came home from Mass General (taken from a helicopter). He was clearly living to the fullest, as well he should.
Y'know what drives me crazy? That a certain class of economists will say that high prices are necessary to change behavior, that nothing else can do the job, that this is The Market Sorting Itself Out and all to the good.
ProfWombat
Think of all the small towns that rely on revenue from out-of-towners caught in speed traps. Now they will have to raise taxes on the locals.
transit's free for seniors here
Atrios,
About 50 minutes to, 30 minutes from.
The weekly pass in Los Angeles is $17. When I turn 62 this August, the monthly pass will cost $14.
Now, ridership alone isn't going to pay for expanded service, but public funding (federal, state, and local) would. Of course, that would mean we might have to take money out of highway maintenance and expansion, so at this point, it doesn't look to happen any time soon.
molly,
and how long is the drive?
mogwai-- Sounds great. BHO is substituting for Kennedy, right?
Don't forget Bush speaks at high school graduations
plantsman: as well should we all. We all have a terminal disease...
high prices are necessary to change behavior
__
Necessity the mother of invention, but in this case it's just intervention, as we already have the means to use less oil.
GM will keep producing SUV's although sales are down. Good luck with that.
You know there's more sheets, right?
Most drivers here are generous with transfer time, but you occasionally get one who strictly adheres to "policy", which is stingy. So it goes.
I remember when some candidate (John Anderson) proposed a 50 cent gas tax and was ridiculed and reviled. Things have certainly changed- now no one dares even to propose it
Gromit | Homepage | 05.24.08 - 8:10 am | #
traveling through virginia or the carolinas during the carter presidency I recall some guy wearing a tshirt that said 'Civil Disobedience' and undernearth the image of speed sign saying '55mph' crossed out.
'freedom's just another word for nothing left to brake'
Molly's even got a blog about it, because, you know, she's the first person to take public transit. to go where no cc teacher has gone before, all all that...
s
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Atrios,
About 50 minutes to, 30 minutes from.
Molly Ivors
A factor for young families is the drop off/pick up of toddlers from day care and preschool which unless convenient to mass transit makes life quite complicated.
Now why would YOU make me think of small children, Molly...
BHO is substituting for Kennedy, right?
yup, this town ain't been buzzing like this since never
yet it's the people with children who should do the most because they have to worry about what type of planet their children will inherit.
It's a 20 minute drive, sometimes longer.
noblejoanie, there's a daycare on campus, and the bus stops right next to it.
Boston commuter rail, 15 miles out
Zone 3 Pass $5.25/ride
$163/month
Zone 3 passes also good for unlimited travel on Local Bus, Subway, Express Bus, and Inner Harbor Ferries.
Not really an option.
Swarthmore never gets love.
viva public transportation
Wow, this IS good news! But I think it would be nice if they could start with the Market-Frankford line...I'm not much for closing out bars, but let's say I did every now and then. I'd want to take the El rather than having to shell out whatever a cab costs from Dirty Franks to 52nd St.
Transit lines that shut down at 1:00 AM or even 2:00 AM become deal-breakers for a lot of teenaged-to-thirtyish people who want to be able to stay out that late (especially on weekends, of course).
You go to a couple of bars with your friends, and have to keep a constant eye on the clock, not for last call, but because you don't really need to be stranded; or you go to a concert at a club, which ends at 1:00 AM, and even if the trains are still running then, it means you can't all go to that really good pizza place down the block from the theater and decompress from the show while talking about it together over a pie, because then you reall would miss the last train home.
The flip side is that it also means there is a time in the morning before which the trains are running again; and if you need to get to the airport two hours before your 7:30 AM flight so that the TSA folks can probe your colon and sniff your shoes, suddenly the trains which begin running at 6:30 AM are not an option, unless you want to take the last train of the night before, and hang out at the airport for four hours waiting for a chance to take off your shoes.
Transit should be late night, especially on the weekends.
When my friend Diane lived in Oakland, she wanted to go out to clubs in San Fran on Friday and Saturday nights. But the BART stops running at midnight.
How many of you want to go to a club on a Saturday night and say "Oopps, it's 11:30 PM and the BART turns into a pumpkin."
Hell, some clubs don't get going until after midnight.
So the point is that Diane rarely went to the San Fran clubs because the bridge was so expensive. If you are going to have public transport, it should also run late night.
@Andrew
You do know that the MFL switches to nite-owl busses, right? It never completely shuts down
Heck, last train from Chicago to Milwaukee leaves at 8PM, which isn't even really night, still daylight in the summer. Still, the 7 trips a day is awesomely frequent service by American standards.
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