What is Racism?

Don't answer the question yet

First, take a look at this article. And the picture.

Now answer my initial question.

If the picture was of George and Laura Bush, would it be racist? Bill and Hillary Clinton? Then why is depicting Obama and the Missus the same way racist?

We are all (allegedly) descended from apes; why is the depiction of one couple racist and another not?

What if the artist who  doctored this photo is black; is it racist then?

Or is it only racist because folks who are not black are seeing this image? What if it was only available in Ebony magazine; would it then be a racist image?

I have complained before about how there is hard racism and soft racism. Hard of course is the KKK. That's easy to identify.

But the Left practices a soft racism; one they refuse to admit, and Obama is either the beneficiary or the cause of the practice. Like the idea that any criticism of Obama is racist.

Ask yourself; is it racist because they can use that rusty canard as a shield, or is it racist because it is not 'proper' to criticize anyone of another race, irrespective of the validity of the criticism?

Back to the image; Remember Chimpy McHitler Bush? How about the images?

If the Obama image is racist, then so are these. Or maybe you don't think they are. Why not? Sauce for the Goose is sauce for the Gander right?

If the only response you have is that the Obama images are racist because they are black, then I will accuse you off being racist; a soft racist. One who feels people of color need to be protected; they aren't capable of defending themselves.

Do you feel that way? Why don't you consider your self a racist?

Is That High Legal?

I was listening to Sean Hannity on the way home today, and he had a debate going on between a Doctor who's name I can't recall and one of his regular guests on the dangers of Marijuana.

This Doctor was an idiot.

It was his contention that occasional, recreational use of weed is so dangerous that it is lowering the IQ of the kids of the users, by affecting the genome of the parents.

Really? He wants to stand by that assertion?

Basically my belief is that nothing is harmful in reasonable amounts, and everything is dangerous in unreasonable amounts.

Pick a substance. Sugar? The detrimental effects of sugar are well known, when consumed in excessive amounts, yet it is a requirement for healthy living in smaller amounts. Same with salt; to much can kill you; not enough can kill you.

Vitamin A is a required nutrient, yet excessive amounts can kill. Morphine, in limited amounts, is a life saver for pain relief, yet in larger quantities can kill.

Beer was a staple for Medieval monks during Lent, when they were fasting, and was a staple drink of the Puritans at Plymouth Rock, in an era when the water was sometimes deadly, yet when consumed in excessive amounts- deadly.

How about water itself? The very essence of life in some respects, yet when consumed in excessive amounts, murderous.

Coffee; a few cups a day are very beneficial. A few pots a day on the other hand, well, that's a different story.

How about Digitalis? A miracle cure for some forms of heart disease in small amounts, and poisonous in larger ones.

Almost any substance you can name is beneficial in certain amounts and dangerous in other ones.

Even chemicals- and that's what we are talking about; chemicals- produced by our own bodies can be both good and evil.

Why do we make somethings illegal and others legal? Why are some uses of a substance legal, and others illegal?

Who sits on high and makes these seemingly random decisions; Where do they get that authority? Do they have some special wisdom?

As usual, I have more questions than answers.

Maybe its time for a re-examination of how we deal with what is legal and illegal.

Or better yet, let competent adults make up their own minds, and get the government out of the way.

UAW Loses Another One

I think I have mentioned several times that Unions have a glorious past, but a rather ignoble present, and a doubtful future. Face it; if we outlawed government worker unionization, the Unionized rate for the workforce as a whole would drop to 5 or 6 percent or less.

The union vote in Volkswagen's Chattanooga Plant is particularly telling. Volkswagen was not only neutral on the vote, but was encouraging the unionization. The lack of a Union in the plant is preventing them from forming company/employee product improvement groups, something they see as a necessary part of plant management.

Why can't they form the improvement groups? It is AGAINST Federal Labor law. Forming the groups without a Union is illegal, and they can't form an in-house union; that is also illegal.

Gee; I wonder which lobby got THAT fine idea made into law?

But; I digress. Again.

My real point today is this post over at The Truth About Cars by a member of the workforce that voted the representation down.

This isn't some outsider talking, or an anti-union activist; this is a person on the ground explaining what the UAW does to you, and why their presence poisons the workplace.

I'll tell you as well, having worked in a union shop years ago; every word is true. In particular the Us versus Them attitude that Union leadership engenders. There is no We when it comes to the workplace; They are evil; They want to steal from you; they want to kill you; nothing They say is true; on and on and on.

Apparently some folks are wising up.

Princess Diana Memorabilia

The Cincinnati Museum Center is currently the home of a traveling exhibit on the life of Diana, Princess of Wales. The wife has shown some interest in attending, and I have to admit a bit of curiosity myself.

After all; I was there. I was in England during the public courtship and marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales. The TV was full of the courtship and the Wedding; you couldn't walk 10 feet anywhere with out bumping into someone selling souvenirs. And this was 70 miles away.

In the City of London you literally could not move. the short stroll from the tube station to anywhere; normally a 10 minute walk was now an hour. The whole country; Hell; the whole world turned out in London for the Wedding of the Century.

I admit I bought a few souvenirs. A vendor had set up a stall in the Lobby of the NCO Club, and she was rather persistent. And attractive. Okay; she was attractive and I was the persistent one. At any rate, during the course of 20 minutes I wound up with 3 plates, guaranteed to go up in value. The whole Wedgwood Pottery thing, very collectable. It was a good spiel.

And they were collectable. Until the Divorce of the Century. D'oh! I thought future Kings couldn't do things like that?

Okay; bury these 'priceless' things in the attic; maybe one day they will be worth something again.

And now we are in 2014. The interest in Diana seems to be peaking again. Let's take a look; see if these old relics are worth anything.

 Well; they are worth something. Depending on the seller, less  than what I paid for them in real dollars 33 years ago, or what I did pay for them without an adjustment for inflation; about 10 bucks each. Persistent and attractive remember?

Stuff 'em back in the attic; maybe they'll be worth something in another 35 years.

Down for the Count?

You have probably already seen the footage; 8 priceless cars dropping into a sinkhole. The article is from The Truth About Cars; it isn't only the post or the footage, it is also the comments.

The Internet is a  super tool, but so are some of the people on it. But I mean that in the nicest possible way. (Where is that sarcasm font when you need it?)

Part of the problem is language. Some people fail to draft their comments in an understandable way; others cannot comprehend and interpret simple English and yet a third set willfully fails to understand- to be contrary, to start an argument, or just because.

In the world of automotive aficionados there are several schools. In this country the debate between Ford and Chevy goes back almost 100 years. Back to when Chevy came out with the overhead valve 'Stovebolt' 6; a design they just retired a dozen years ago, and the Model T Ford. Both both Chevy and Ford fans agree Dodge is a big step behind the two of them. And then there is the American Cars versus Foreign cars; American and European versus Asian Cars. They sometimes remind me of high school rivalries- intense, but in the end meaningless.

Some of those rivalries show up in the comments; The inexplicable sadness from the Corvette guys; the unsympathetic remarks from the Ford and Doge folks. The dedicated humanist- THEIR ONLY CARS GET OVER IT.

Me? I'm with you fellers.

There were some one of a kind, priceless cars damaged when this sinkhole opened up. Milestone cars. There will be, and can be, only 1 Millionth Corvette. You can't replace it, you can't reproduce it. But you CAN repair it.

The Museum is in Bowling Green Kentucky, right across the street from the factory where they have been building these cars for 30 years. I don't think any detail will be so arcane or expensive that it can't be reproduced by the company that built these cars originally.

One commenter compared these cars to the Mona Lisa, negatively. His comment was that these were mass-produced items; easily copied. Unlike the Mona Lisa. I'm sorry to laugh in his face, but I am forced to. I can go to the internet right now and down load a copy of the Mona Lisa.

See? Easy.

No, it is not 500 years old, painted on a wooden panel or priceless. Well, it was sort of priceless; it was free.

But it has been mass produced. Yes, there is only one original, and the ownership of the original means something. I also seem to recall that old Mona here has had some work done in the last 500 years. She ain't exactly 'all original', if you know what I mean.

And in the end none of these 8 Corvettes will be either.

So maybe they do have more in common with the Mona Lisa than is viable at first blush.

A Street Car Named Disaster

There are I would imagine, some very upset voters in the City of Cincinnati.

For those of you from out of town, or in town and under a rock somewhere, the last election was a referendum on the Cincinnati Street car. And all of the candidates who came out in favor of the Street Car Named Disaster lost.

So it was toast, right? No more Choo- Choo through The 'Nati?

Well, yes. And then maybe. And then no.

Half of the folks elected solely because they opposed the Streetcar CHANGED THEIR MINDS.

Yep; within a week of being sworn in the the Little Engine That Shouldn't was once again the Little Engine That Was.

Here's the thing: I ain't got a dog in this fight, so to speak. I don't live, work or pay taxes on that side of the river. The only thing I will spend money on in Ohio is a 12 -pack of Yuengling, and then only because I can't get a 12-pack on this side of the river.

And then I drive far enough to avoid giving Hamilton County any money, just in case.

So they can do almost anything they want over there; it won't effect me. Except for when they will try to export that insanity down South, or will try to form a 'Regional Coalition' to force me to pay for something I didn't even get to vote on. Like that mattered to the newly elected City Council anyway.

But here are a few facts they need to consider:

1) All of the cities with an extensive mass transit system had that system in place prior to the invention of the Automobile.
2) All of these 'viable' systems (New York; Chicago; London; Paris, etc.) have had over 150 years of building and investment; Trillions of dollars.
3) These 'viable' systems work because there are concentrated living areas and concentrated work areas.
4) All of the cites with those 'viable' systems grew UP because of the need for mass transit.
5) Any city that has grown since the advent of the automobile has grown OUT.
6) All of these 'viable' systems Still Need Taxpayer Funded Support.

These are facts that are inescapable; they can't be whitewashed, and shouldn't be ignored. and Cincinnati does not meet any of the points that would lead me to believe that mass transit would be viable in Cincinnati.

Viable mass transit is a pipe-dream, and in this case, most likely a crack-pipe dream.

Who Will Survive?

My friend and resident liberal commentator sent me a link to this article, which makes a lot in interesting points.

First how the AFL-CIO is ready willing and quick to blame Bain Capital for Hostess' demise. Although Bain had nothing to do with Hostess in any way shape or form. Is blaming Bain a knee jerk reaction or a left talking point? Hard to tell.

But we do find out that a venture capital outfit DID have a hand in Hostess. A company called Ripplewood, which was founded by Timothy C. Collins, a major Democratic donor, purchased Hostess out of its earlier bankruptcy; intending to turn it into a showcase of how to rebuild a union company.

Yeah; that worked out well; didn't it?

Who is the first person to get involved? Richard Gephardt, former Democratic House leader.

So while the AFL-CIO is spouting "Bain', like a raven perched on a bust of Pallas, it was actually the left side of the aisle that was raping and pillaging the Twinkies. No wonder we haven't seen any long screeds in the press or on CNN about the EVIL capitalists ruining the country, one poor little union company at a time.

Another interesting point is the increases in executive compensation:

Perhaps the most egregious sin of Ripplewood’s oversight of Hostess was the increase in management’s compensation at the same time it was seeking to cut employee compensation. The Confectionery, Tobacco Workers & Grain Millers International Union pointed out that the company’s new chief executive was paid $2,550,000, up from $750,000. Another “executive received a pay increase from $500,000 to $900,000 and another received one taking his salary from $375,000 to $656,256,” the union said. Mr. Collins declined to comment.

Let me say this about that; First; the company is privately held, so salaries and compensation are not of public record anywhere, so it had to be some sort of espionage, if the numbers are correct. Which they may not be.

Second; assume they are correct. That is a total increase in compensation of $2,481,256; or $134 per employee. $2.58 a week- 6 cents an hour.

Amazing how math works, ain't it?

I'm not saying Management is 100% right and the union is 100% wrong. I won't even admit to a 75/25 split.

All I know is if 10% of the country is out of work, and I still have a job, 8% is a hell of a lot less than 100% when it comes to a pay cut.

On a personal note, I worked in a union show a few years back that was going through the same thing Hostess was. My union brothers were of the opinion that if it weren't for them our industry would cease to exist. Push came to shove, and they went out on strike. We were back within a week, but the damage was done. less than 6 months later the place was gone.

Guess what? the industry still exists.

And NONE of us are working in it.

Stopping Another Aurora

The news for the last two days has been full of the Aurora, Colorado shootings. Every newscast has been full of the shootings, even to the point where it has knocked the mud-slinging between Romney and Obama off of the news.

There are so many facets to this story that it will be years before we know everything, if we ever do.

The worst part is not the shooting, horrific as it was, but the reaction of the left to the shootings.

The first thing they did was look to see if the shooter belonged to the Tea Party. While the EMTs were still treating victims at the theater, and the police were trying to figure out how to enter the shooter's booby-trapped apartment,  the Lame-Stream Media were already trying to make a political win out of the deaths of these innocent victims.

The shooter was insane; that is a given. How anyone can argue otherwise is beyond me. There is no way any sane individual could have walked into that room armed as he was and illegally use those weapons to kill and maim innocent people in cold blood.

This was a scene out of a movie. The difference is that although sane minds will create these scenes for movies, they don't act them out in real life. This shooter did. That is, to me, a hallmark of insanity. Sane people can imagine these events, only the insane carry them out.

That he was able to hide that insanity and legally purchase the firearms he used does not lessen the depth of that insanity.

This is what makes the almost immediate call for more gun control all the more egregious.

These gun control groups were figuratively standing on the broken bodies of the victims to spout their ideology. They would have done it literally, but they couldn't make it to the scene in time.

Maybe that is why the liberals always win the propaganda wars. They have no shame. The victims of this shooter are not fellow human beings to be mourned, and their families comforted; they are a crisis not to be wasted.

Hopefully one day soon people will wake up to the fact that the liberal faction of this country is not concerned about anything but their agenda. If they need to stand on the bodies of the dead and wounded from this tragedy, or any other, to advance their cause, they will. The innocent victims; their families, the shooter- all pawns to be used to advance the cause.

They use the raw emotions of tragedy to move The Cause forward. To gain a new restriction while the memory of the deaths is still fresh.

Because they know that logical thought will turn them down; they require emotion, the roughed up revival fever that requires we DO SOMETHING NOW; STOP THIS FROM HAPPENING AGAIN!

But gun laws don't stop tragedies like this.

No new law can stop a tragedy like this.

The only defense we have from the lone, insane gunman is the ability of a roomful of people legally able to shoot back.

Where Do We Go From Here?

This whole Trayon Martin situation is disturbing to me.

I don't understand how anybody can make a decision on who was right and who was wrong based solely on what they have been told by the media. And yet millions have done so.

And who was right and who was wrong hinges on so many little things we don't know.

the problem is, those points aren't making news; just things that will force a certain opinion are being promoted. Simply; we're being played.

Take the photo issue. The picture we are told is Mr. Martin is actually him at 13, not 17. Is that the most recent photo they have, or does it just portray him the way he is supposed to be portrayed- as fresh faced, small muscled kid?

And the descriptions of George Zimmerman as white. Never mind his Jewish father or Hispanic mother. Doesn't fit the narrative. So he becomes a white Hispanic. A what?

Then there is the 911 call about trailing Mr. Martin. Mr Zimmerman tells the dispatcher he is following Mr. Martin, and the dispatcher states that 'we don't need you to do that'. Media filters are saying the cops ordered him not to follow Mr. Martin. False; he is only told that the dispatch center doesn't 'need' Mr. Zimmerman to follow Mr. Martin. But having Mr. Zimmerman disregard police orders to follow Mr. Martin makes him appear very aggressive, which fits the narrative.

Here is what I think happened, based on the facts I have heard. Is this the truth? I have no way of knowing.

Mr. Zimmerman lives in a gated community that has had a few robberies lately. As a self appointed community watch captain he is patrolling the community with a legal firearm. He sees a stranger, dressed in the universal uniform of the troublemaker, and follows him to see what, if anything, he is up to. Mr. Martin objects to this, and confronts Mr. Zimmerman. we will probably never know what was said in this confrontation, but we do know Mr. Zimmerman wound up on his back at one point, and suffered a bloody nose and cuts to the back of his skull.

And Mr. Martin wound up dead.

The local police looked at all of the facts at the time this incident happened (a month ago), and concluded Mr. Zimmerman acted properly.

Slowly some additional information about Mr. Martin has come out, since the explosion of interest in the case pushed by the national race-baiter coalition. Mr. Martin has been suspended from school at least 3 times, the latest- and the reason he was in Sanford FL instead of his home in Miami- was 10 days for possession of a baggie with pot residue and a pot pipe.

So Mr. Martin is not the innocent lad with an ice tea a Skittles the narrative is meant to lead us to believe.

So what is my point?

The point is we can't try a case like this, or any case, in the court of public opinion. Media fails to provide all of the facts. Some through poor reporting, some through missing information, and some through pushing a narrative. I have no more interest in convicting Mr. Zimmerman than I do convicting Mr. Martin.

But I am curious as to why all of the interest in this case a month late.

And the complete lack of interest by the Media and the Sharpton crowd in the multiple deaths in the rest of the nation of young black men, killed by other young black men.

I guess Sharpton waited as long as he could for a cop to shoot a black teen, and had to settle for a neighborhood watch captain.

I found this post through Instapundit this morning. And although he is condemning the strategy that HR administrators use a degree from certain schools as a short cut to hiring, I have been making that same argument against a college degree for years.

20 years ago or so, when one of my brothers graduated from college, he was offered a job as a freight broker. The job consisted of planning load pickups and drop offs for truckers. He wasn't interested, but I was looking for job that wasn't physical (and was 9-5) and sent them a resume.

Although I had approximately 6 years experience in shipping/receiving and inventory control, they weren't interested. No college degree. Can anybody explain why I need a college degree to figure out how to load a truck?

I'll tell you why; a BA was a shortcut for HR. instead of checking references and job history, they just asked for a diploma.

Now it has apparently gotten worse. I guess since college degrees have gotten as common as high school diplomas used to be, now HR has fallen back to selecting a few schools to accept your degree from.

So the Harvard, Yale and Princeton crowd is now running the country.

And that is just working out SO well, ain't it?

NOTE: I had this post ready to go yesterday morning, and blogger ate half of it, so I had to finish it up and post it on Saturday. Friday got busy.

"What The Heck Was THAT?"

I happened to spot this story yesterday while looking for something else.

I once had a bug hit my windshield that was so big my car shuddered. I can't imagine they hit this and didn't know it.

Interesting point in the article; there are only about 30,000 of these creatures left, and that makes them endangered.

Hell, there probably ain't 50 real journalist left, but I don't see the government calling them endangered and promoting their salvation.

Priorities, priorities, priorities.

Well, It Looks Like We Used To Have Free Country

News reports say the Dems have 60 votes needed to end the filibuster and put their "Health Care" bill to a vote.

Welcome to the end.

WTF!?!?!?!? Seriously; WTF?!?!?!?!

Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize!?!?!?

Hell, if all it takes to win s nine months of doin' nuthin' then I have been eligible for years.

Honestly, if this isn't the last nail in the coffin of legitimacy for this idiocy i don't what will be.

First Al Gore for his crap a couple of years ago, and now this.

George Bush wipes out two evil regimes, frees 45 million people and gives women in two countries the first rights they have ever had and gets....

Nothing.

Obama smiles, nods and eloquates his way into a job he is severely under qualified for and....

Wins the Nobel Peace Prize.


Seriously; WTF?!?!?!?

Tonight I will definately need some bourbon.

Screen Door in A Submarine Time

I was surfing the 'net and found this and started to read the article.

Within 3 paragraphs I realized either the author is out of touch with reality, or I am. The 'money' quote:

Except for a long straightaway on the way back to the Civic Auditorium, we never felt out of sync with the speed of traffic. .... when we sped up to the Wheego's top speed of 25 mph.

I don't know about the rest of the country, but with a top speed of 25 mph around here you would be limited to about a 10 by 10 block are of downtown. And that is provided the thing will climb a hill.

Basically, this thing is an $18,000 golf cart that is street legal. And this is the CADILLAC of electric vehicles?!?!?! Either this guy has no idea what the Cadillac of a genre is; the idea of a Cadillac of something has seriously gone down hill, or this IS the Cadillac of EVs and they are a sorrier lot of garbage than I ever imagined.

Just so I don't leave in doubt who is the one of us out of touch, I want to highlight this line:

It's easy to imagine that most people will be able to make an NEV like the Wheego work just fine in day-to-day use...

NONE of the people I know could make this work without being a traffic hazard. I can't think of a single person I know who could make their drive to work without leaving a 25 mph zone. Well, except for the folks who commute in their pajamas.

Newspapers Are Out of Touch

I had a conversation at work Friday with a coworker about the main stream media. His assertion was that the reason people hate Obama is because they aren’t reading newspapers anymore. His proof that people aren’t reading the papers? The fact that they are dying all over the country.

He and I tend to disagree on quite a bit. I blame his education. This was just one of the examples of how his teachers have failed him over the years. He failed to recognize the slant in the news; he failed to understand the history of print journalism in this country and he failed to understand why people are no longer following the MSM.

Point one; he didn’t recognize the way words can be used to sway even the reporting of facts. Take for instance just reporting the description of a crowd at a Tea Party Rally. Describing them as “simmering with hostility” leaves a different impression than calling them “boisterous”. Both may be basically accurate, but neither may convey the whole truth.

The Van Jones resignation is interesting too for the slant it can show. Here is the Fox News story; and here is NBC. Notice the difference?

It was also his contention that the MSM isn’t slanted, Fox News is. I argued that all of the MSM is slanted BUT Fox. The channel is slanted, but I don’t see any slant in their reporting. Read the NBC report. This is a screen shot; in case they see the light and change the story later this weekend:



In 4 short paragraphs they reference “Smear Campaign”; “Lies and Distortions” and that Jones was “under fire for a series of inflammatory statements he made about Republicans”. But they aren’t biased. What were the statements, NBC?

Now read the Fox story. I found it quite fair.

Point two: his contention was that media bias is new. Well, if you consider William Randolph Hearst and his creation of Yellow Journalism in the 1890’s new; then maybe. Of course the whole idea that there were entire newspapers against Abe Lincoln has to be forgotten about. And the entire Jefferson presidency. And everything back to the pre-revolutionary days.

Anybody remember when every town had at least2 papers? One would lean left and one would lean right, and you got the whole truth by reading both? He was complaining that people got their news from blogs, and not newspapers, and blogs are biased.

Well, duh! It’s just like the old days. Read left blogs and read right blogs; then you get the whole truth.

The reason nobody reads the newspaper anymore (or watches ABC; CBS and NBC) for their news is because they have lost their credibility. We know they are biased; but they refuse to admit it. And until they decide to admit their bias they will continue to slide.

But the left NEEDS us to reads their propaganda organs. Their version of the ‘truth’ is correct; we just need to realize it.

Let's Dump Billions Down a Rathole

Light rail. What a buzz word. It says everything, and nothing. Just what is “light rail”?

Cincinnati, like every other city of any size had a street car system, which was dismantled in favor of motorized buses in the middle of the last century. When some one says light rail, think glorified street car. Why do we now want to resurrect something we abandoned 60 years ago? Why did we, and almost every other city in the country, trade our fondly remembered street cars for noisy, smelly buses?

Quite simply, flexibility. When a population base moves from one area to another, how hard is it to re-route buses, and change the number of times a bus will pass a certain location? How hard is it to re-route a street car? Besides laying new rails, widening a street to accept a new lane dedicated to these rails, and the politics of abandoning the old rails, it’s not that difficult. Now you know why we retired the street car.

Why is mass transit popular and feasible in places like Boston, Washington and New York? In a nut shell, population density and central destinations. There are enough people in one place, who wish to go to another place, and riding a subway is economically feasible, and convenient. Trains run often enough and the system is designed around getting folks from point A to point B almost around the clock.

Compare that with Cincinnati. Not only are our population centers scattered widely, so are our destinations. Less than 15% of the total area work force has downtown as a destination. Springdale, Florence, Eastgate, Blue Ash and half a dozen other places have as many, or maybe more, commuters on a daily basis.

There is also a certain mindset that uses public transportation. In most of the cities where public transportation is widely used, it was in place before the automobile became common. Why was Cincinnati’s subway system left unfinished in 1922? The Model T Ford had reduced the people’s reliance on public transportation.

Once the masses were free to come and go where they pleased, when the pleased, and as they pleased, regimented travel no longer held any attraction. Don’t take my word for it; ask any kid who has a license and a car to get back on a school bus. If you’ve ever tried it then you know getting our city back on public transport will be a task of Herculean proportions.

A quick look at the 5 largest cities in the U.S., and their public transportation statistics, shows a correlation between age of the city and rider ship. The more densely populated a city was in 1900, the more likely it is to have a viable public system. New York had a population of almost 3.5 million in 1900, Los Angeles, barely over 102,000.

They are now the two largest cities in the country. According to the website Geography World, (http://www.demographia.com/db-uscity98.htm) New York City has a population of a little over 8 million, with a density of over 26,000 per square mile. According to the Urban Transport Factbook website, at http://www.publicpurpose.com/ut-ride2000all.htm, New York had a per capita public transport use of 880 passenger miles in 2000. In other words, every citizen of the Big Apple rode 880 miles on a public conveyance.

Compared to LA, from the same sources, with a population of almost 3.7 million, and a density of about 7800. Their public rider ship? In 2000, only 159 passenger miles per capita. We can assume one of two things from these statistic: either the denizens of La-La land don’t go anywhere, or they primarily use their own automobile.

What about Cincinnati? Statistics for the city only show a density of 4200 people per square mile, and only 91 passenger miles per capita on public transportation. At this rate Porkopolis doesn’t need public buses; we need to put each Metro driver on a bicycle built for two.

Public transport works in New York for the same reasons it doesn’t work in other places: parking, room to expand roadways, car culture, and convenience. Light rail will fail here for the same reasons.

As long as we have safe, affordable parking, lack of complete gridlock, and the ability to walk to our car and drive home before the next bus comes along, we won’t punish ourselves with a public conveyance.

If I can leave my place of employment, walk a quarter of a mile or less to my car, and drive home, all in 30 minutes, or wait 10 minutes for a 45 minute bus ride, why take the bus? Factoring in the relatively low cost of parking, and the value of my time, the bus seems even less attractive.

Would a new light rail system be any better? Sure; after the 120 years of construction and trillions of dollars for infrastructure that cities like New York, Boston and Chicago have spent.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’ll be standing on a street corner that long.

And yes, if we want a viable public system we need to start somewhere, But from Findlay Market to Great American Ballpark. Are they SERIOUS!?!?!
And what about all of these folks who are proponents of the streetcar, and claim they will ride them when they are finished? Why aren’t they riding the bus NOW?

As Popeye Says

As Popeye always says-“I’ve had all I can stands and I cain’t stands no more”!

How much longer will we be tortured by the Swine Flu?

This in not even an epidemic, much less a pandemic. What do we have? 400-500 cases? In a country of 350 MILLION?

I’m not enough of a mathematician to give you the odds against getting Swine Flu (yeah I know it’s now House 1; Bettors 0 Flue or some such crap officially, but I knew the Flu back in the day; it will always be good ol’ Swine Flu to me), but a rough guess would be about 1,000,000 to 1 against getting it, and 350,000,000 to 1 against dying from it.

That doesn’t seem like a big risk to me. What are my odds of dying from ANYTHING in the next year? Apparently your friendly neighborhood Federal Government wants to know as well. They compiled a chart and published it on the internets back when the illiterate GW Bush was in the White House. The new guy apparently thinks you don’t need that information.

But I did find the chart on another blog – if I knew how to do all the fancy stuff I’d do it: (http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2008/03/odds-of-dying-in-us.html).

One thing that struck me was the idea that I only have a 23 to1 chance of dying in my lifetime from anything?!?!?!?! WTF!?!?!? Does that mean I’m only going to die AFTER I’m DEAD?

And what about all of those “unintentional” things? Does that mean people actually get bitten by Hornets INTENTIONALLY?

This may not be a complete list; I don’t see the flu on here at all, and a normal flu bug kills 30,000 people a year in this country. Swine Flu? MAYBE (and that’s a BIG MAYBE) – Drum Roll Please--- 2.

I’m done with this garbage. Drop the Swine Flu Hype already.