“Listen, strange women lying in ponds, distributing swords, is no basis for a system of government.”
Y’know, actually, it’s sounding pretty good to me right now.
Long-term parking
Interesting read here, and a “big idea” indeed.
The author opines that removing vehicles from the nation’s streets “would make urban life cheaper, safer, quieter and more pleasant,” and that good public transportation “coupled with fast, safe, pleasant walking and bicycling can easily meet the need for movement within our cities.”
As a bicyclist who just drove a couple thousand miles to the Phoenix clusterplex and back, and as a resident of the Duke City, where driving like a deranged asshole is the official city sport, I can dig it. The recent trend toward cheap gas has not made motoring any happier, either, unless you’re one of the overpowered, underbrained sociopaths who thinks “Max Max: Fury Road” was a documentary.
But I’d sure like to see some numbers on the up-front cost of shifting urban hellholes like Phoenix, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas to auto-free — or even auto-limited — human-friendly habitats. Somehow the word “cheaper” is not the first descriptive to leap to mind.
Bill me later
The chattering classes are having a high old time recounting the “beating” The Mouth That Roared endured last night at the manicured hands of Marco 3P0 and Texas Ted Cruz, the Gucci Shitkicker.
What they mostly forget is that Trump’s voters don’t care what the media elites think. And I’ll bet that any mouthbreathers who were on the fence as regards TMTR are firmly under the Big Orange Tent now after watching those two bidness-as-usual sellouts from Washington, D.C., tag-teaming the big fella like a pair of yapping coyotes trying to bring down a bull elk.
I think Steve Benen gets it mostly right here: They threw everything at him, up to and including the kitchen sink, and what did it get them? This morning TMTR is up and at ’em on Twitter, breezily calling them chickenshits, jagoffs and feebs.
Hell, even I started to get riled up once 3P0 started beeping and chirping like he was a Terminator or something, while Cruz minced around looking all “West Side Story” with his Harvard Law letter opener. And I wouldn’t vote for any of these bozos if the Donks ran Adam Sandler and Rosie O’Donnell against them. Despicable.
Back in the saddle again
Nose, meet grindstone.
I pretty much plugged right back in after my little sojourn in the desert. Cranked out a column and cartoon for Bicycle Retailer, edited pix and video for Adventure Cyclist, bashed out a post and gallery for all y’all, delivered myself of a few quips on social media, replenished the larder, and got the Subie serviced.
The old rice rocket is still ticking along nicely after 11 years and 117,000 miles, and a few inexpensive repairs — replacing the cracked moon roof, reupholstering the driver’s seat and buffing the haze out of the headlights — should keep me off the car lots for a while yet.
The critters’ separation anxieties have all been soothed (I haven’t told them Herself will be pissing off to Hawaii here directly). And if I haven’t had a lick of exercise in three days, well, at least I’ve gotten a few things done.
After a heavenly week of shunning radio, TV and the Innertubez, I can’t say I’ve enjoyed catching up on the news, save for a bit of heehawing at Jeb (!) finally noticing all those loafer prints in his ass. How pleasurable it was to finally see a head roll in that dime-store dynasty, even with The Donald serving as executioner.
And speaking of The Mouth That Roared, that tale has pretty much stopped being funny. Over at MoJo, David Corn reminds us that the Rethugs have no one to blame but themselves for this billionaire buccaneer who sailed right into the middle of their tony fleet and let fly with broadsides to port and starboard.
At The Guardian, Jeb Lund distributes the credit a little more widely, observing that the courtier press is a bit too comfy in its own box seat at the opera to notice that the peasants outside are revolting (oy, are they ever).
Me, I think we all had a hand in the phenomenon that Charlie Pierce calls “He, Trump.” Or off it, as in abandoning control of our electoral processes to the pros, fixers and wizards.
This is one of the reasons I’m not sanguine about the idea of self-driving cars. If you’re not in the driver’s seat, you can be certain that someone else is. And they may be taking you somewhere you’d rather not go.
Sand bagging: Drifting through the desert
As promised, here are a few more shots from my all-too-brief sojourn in the Lower Verde Basin. I always intend to shoot more, but once I get into the saddle a certain mindset takes over and the camera stays parked in its jersey pocket. Clicking any image will open the whole shebang in gallery mode.
Mad Blog Media 