Kiss Me, I'm Irate

Here in Seattle we have a pretty decent transit system. Now, it’s not as good as New York’s, or as many others, but it’s pretty damn good given what we have to work with, especially after the addition of Sound Transit.

Now, we have this nice thing downtown called the Ride Free Zone. In most of downtown, you can get on a bus and ride it to any other part of the zone for free.  This is pretty handy if you want to go grab lunch at the other end of town or something.  There’s also a tunnel that runs under most of 3rd Avenue and then up Pine Street, and at the south end (of third) it connects with a transit-only thoroughfare that runs all the way down to Spokane Street, at least, maybe farther.  If you catch a bus that goes in the tunnel, that’s the quickest way to get from Sodo to north downtown.  This is part of why buses are awesome.  Also we have the S.L.U.T. and light rail going in, but those aren’t buses.

Riding the bus through downtown – wherever it’s going (since anyone can and will hop on just to get to the other end of downtown, since it’s free) always presents you with an interesting cross-section of the population.  Like the guy who gets on talking to himself loudly about punching punk-ass motherfucking bitches, which is probably the extent of his vocabulary.  Or the two women I had the displeasure of riding with once: [somewhat loudly] “Girl, where you been?” “I just got outta jail” “Naw” “Yeah, I had another miscarriage” “In jail?” “Yeah” (something is broken there if you ask me, but that’s another post maybe).  Maybe I should wear kevlar in Belltown (northwest bit of downtown, between Pike, Westlake, and the Denny Regrade), idk.

Per slashdot, today was declared by someone or other “Blog Action Day.”  Someone decided to spontaneously try to get everyone to blog about the environment.  Riiiight.  Well I for one am inspired.

So today is the most recently declared “Blog Action Day.”  This particular declaration from whatever group that nobody is going to care about when the not-news leaves the slashdot front page is that this day is for blogging about the environment.  Now, a lot of you probably think that I’m going to blog about how we should be doing more to save the environment, or how wonderful it is, or something to that effect.  Therefore, so you know what you’re getting into, and for the rest of you who are going to say tl;dr: fuck environmentalists.

I was going to say the environment there, but that wasn’t quite right.  I have no problem with the environment, save that it seems to inspire people to interfere with perfectly reasonable plans of others.  Granted, I found GreenPeace hanging themselves off of the Aurora Bridge to try to block some kind of large ship coming into Lake Washington and then being arrested and having no net effect whatsoever EXTREMELY amusing, but I imagine marine traffic on the ship canal didn’t.

There’s this measure on the Washington State ballot this November, Proposition 1.  It’s called the Roads and Transit Measure, and that’s basically what it is.  Massive improvements to main roads, including a few badly-needed expansions of interstate highways, and transit in the Puget Sound area.  One of the biggest opponents of it is the Sierra Club.  Now think about this for a minute.  Transit has a huge positive effect on the environment.  Arguably, better roads do as well – faster throughput means cars on the roads for shorter times, therefore less emissions, therefore smaller impact on the environment.  QED.  But no.  Expanding the freeways is going to have another impact on the environment – they have to take out a few trees to make room.  God forbid.

Get over it, people.  The environment isn’t in the greatest shape, but it’s improved drastically in the last few decades, despite Al Gore (HE’S CERIAL!) and his contemporaries.   Could we improve it more?  Yeah.  But is that really why you want me to drive a hybrid?  No, it’s so you can make gas cost more (sales are down!) so you can afford more money to hire someone to drive you around in a stretch-Hummer limo when you retire, you fucking pig of a half-wit oil executive.  I know your game.

…

But really though.  The real reason people buy Priuses and their kin are not because they’re low emissions.  It’s because “low emissions” translates to “high mileage” usually.  Quit pretending to try to help the environment so you can feel good about that and feel good about driving technology forward (pun intended) instead.  And if I’m lucky, you might even drive the cost downward.

An interesting thing is happening with this round of Presidential elections, but it’s something that’s been growing in Congress as well. The candidates aren’t acting like leaders. And the congresspeople aren’t acting like, well, congress.

You may ask why I say this. It’s simple, really. Presidents lead. That is their purpose. They may try to bend to the will of the people somewhat, but they do what’s right, or try to. It wasn’t Congress that signed the Emancipation Proclamation, or who ordered the US Military to protect the racial integration in an elementary school as the state governor tried to block it with the National Guard. Nor was it Congress who ordered the invasion of Afghanistan, or for that matter Iraq. Say what you like about President George W. Bush, and believe me, I myself could say a lot, but he is a strong leader.

Likewise with Congress – a ruling body intended to reflect the views of its constituents. Certainly to do what’s right – that’s why we don’t vote everything by popular vote – but also to follow their constituents’ will. Congressmen are not supposed to, say, earmark $223 million of federal funds for a bridge to an island of 50 people (that’s $4.5 million each, if you’re counting) that don’t want it. Thank you Senator Ted Stevens (he makes such a great example of someone who should be impeached, yet when he threatened to quit Congress if funds were diverted from said widely hailed “bridge to nowhere” for hurricane Katrina relief efforts, they tweaked the wording so he’d stay – that’s another post).

Now, a final word on the Presidential candidates running for next fall. I can’t blame them for not acting like strong leaders. This country is afraid of strong leaders right now (or so they think), because look what happened last time we elected one. We wound up in a war we probably can’t win, meanwhile stem cell research programs were set back years.

The fact is, the country isn’t afraid of strong leaders. If a single candidate could take hold and rally the United States behind a cause, or even just an opinion, they would win by a landslide. Hell, if a candidate could just decide what the hell they believe and stand for, they could probably win because right now America needs someone to believe in.

What do you put in a “welcome” first post?  Hell if I know…

Yeah, I don’t have anything to put here really.  I made a blog because I could.  Stuff will come later.  Therefore, in lieu of content, here’s some “About” page material that will likely be copied there when and if I actually create an “About”
page.

The title came from a slashdot signature.  I later realized that it’s probably parodied from those “Kiss Me, I’m Irish!” aprons and shirts you see everywhere.  You’re Irish, good for you.  So am I – and German, and Swedish I think, but American born.  Here, have a thimble.

So, no idea why you’re here.  Whether you’re a friend who I gave the link to, or you stumbled across the blog somehow, or you were wondering why there was a site titled “Kiss Me, I’m Irate” on a “What Links Here” page from google or something, welcome.  Stick around for a while, leave your name in the guestbook.  Or the Comments part, whatever.  Same idea.