I hear the tram a-comin...
Everybody get out your tickets: the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail will open three new stations on Tuesday, Sept. 7, extending from Bayonne through Jersey City, Hoboken, and all the way into Weehawken.
Speaking of public transit, here in Hoboken we're losing one of our main bus lines: As of today, there'll be no more Academy buses between Hoboken and New York. New Jersey Transit's buses will now be plying the route alone.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @6:11 PM
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4.9.04  |
Letting sleeping ducks lie
Rocky Top Brigade ringleader South Knox Bubba has a weekly tradition: Friday bird blogging. We've got birds here on the Hudson waterfront, too. Here's one of them, resting up from the excitement of the Republican Convention:
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @3:05 PM
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3.9.04 |
An exception
I thought I was a yellow-dog Democrat -- so much so that I'd even vote for a blue cat or a chartreuse hamster. But everybody has limits. Last night America heard from a man who claims to be a Democrat, even though Democratic Party Chair Terry McAuliffe repeated today that "he has no position in this party." He's yellow, he's a dawg, but I would never vote for Zell Miller.
Did you know that Dick Cheney either voted against, spoke out against or eliminated each and every military weapon Miller mentioned last night?
Speaking of exceptions, why weren't both of Cheney's daughters out there on the stage with him last night? Was somebody afraid of the likes of Alan Keyes?
Don't forget to join the Great American Shoutout tonight as Bush approaches the podium to accept his party's nomination. You can shout no matter what side you're on. In the New York metro area, people will be shouting "Fuggeddaboudit!" -- but I might go with a more succinct regionalism from my native Appalachia: "GIT!"
Meanwhile, the Pleasure Boat Captains for Truth have been joined by the Cheerleaders for Truth, who are seeking any evidence that Mr. Bush actually did any cheerleading at Yale, other than the varsity letter he was awarded for it.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @3:51 PM
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2.9.04 |
Pleasure Boat Captains for Truth speak out as new security hole found in electronic voting system
Sick of the swift boat vets? Meet the Pleasure Boat Captains for Truth, and check out their ad about George W. Bush's past.
Want to make sure your vote is counted? Black Box Voting reports on a huge security hole in the Diebold central tabulator:
" -- 1,000 of these systems are in place, and they count up to two million votes at a time...By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location, a second set of votes is created. This set of votes can be changed, so that it no longer matches the correct votes. The voting system will then read the totals from the bogus vote set. It takes only seconds to change the votes, and to date not a single location in the U.S. has implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks."
As you may recall, Diebold is "the world's leading voting solutions provider." Diebold CEO Wally ODell stated in a Republican fund-raising letter last year that "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president."
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @4:33 PM
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1.9.04 |
Taking a Republican to (virtual) lunch
We have an outreach program here in the Big Apple to welcome our Republican visitors: the Take a Republican to Lunch program, sponsored by Time Out New York magazine and Air America Radio. Here's how it works: you take a Republican, whether a convention delegate, co-worker, neighbor, or passing commuter, to lunch at a participating restaurant. Then dine, discuss, debate, and enjoy a discount on your meal. Tell Air America about it afterward, and if your story is good enough, you might win a prize (a gift certificate, not the Pulitzer).
I hadn't been planning to participate, since I don't know any local Republicans or any visiting delegates, but this morning I decided to reach out anyway and extend an invitation to West Knox Mamma, a Republican consultant who is blogging the convention for the Knoxville News-Sentinel along with the Rocky Top Brigade's South Knox Bubba. Ms. West Knox and I have never met, but we have both been mentioned in the same blog. As West Knox Mamma is literally a mamma with her youngun here with her at the convention, I invited her to bring the baby as well, but quite understandably, both mother and child already have a jam-packed schedule this week and there just wasn't room to squeeze in a social engagement with a yellow-dog-Democrat stranger. I know how it goes when you're at a convention. Maybe next time.
In lieu of an actual in-person, face-to-face sit-down conversation, then, I offer this substitute: a virtual, hypothetical, fictional lunch with a nameless, faceless, generic Republican.
I'd take you to the Tick Tock Diner, Mr. or Ms. Republican, except that this week the Tick Tock has been transformed into the CNN Diner, and even if we could get in, we might run into Jack Cafferty. Disagreeing with most everything Cafferty says is generally the one tiny piece of common ground I can find with Republicans. We could go to another diner if you like, or even some sort of ethnic food, but I must warn you that even though New York claims to offer every kind of food in the world, there are still a few exotic foods you cannot find here:
a) Biscuits and gravy. You can find breakfast biscuits at McDonalds and Burger King, but no biscuits and gravy. There are a couple of places that have it on the menu, but careful: the gravy on those alleged biscuits is brown.
b) Cornbread. Some places do have something they call by that name, but it has, ahem, sugar in it and is therefore corn cake.
c) Khachapuri. Not a Tennessee thing a-tall, but you can't find this Georgian (as in the former Soviet Republic) cheese bread here either, with or without gravy (or sugar).
d) Haggis. You can, however, find a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey if you come around Thanksgiving.
Whatever you decide to eat, stick with it: you can't reconsider because that would be flip-flopping, something your candidate does all the time, at least as much as he accuses our candidate of doing. Just yesterday, for example, your man told NBC's Matt Lauer that the war on terror can never be won, but this morning he told the American Legion that it can and we will.
What's that, Republican guest? There's a fly in your soup? Too bad -- now we'll have to ban all soups, just as your party insists that the solution to the lies in the Republican-backed swift boat ads is to ban all ads by so-called "527" groups. And your steak sandwich is overcooked? OK, I guess we'll have to outlaw meat.
Thanks for offering our waitress a tax cut as a gratuity, but since I'm picking up the tab, I'll leave the tip as well. Most restaurant workers don't make enough to qualify for the tax cuts your party has pushed through in recent years anyway, and they need all the extra nickels and dimes they can scrounge to pay for health insurance -- that is if they can find a company willing to sell it to them.
After lunch, maybe my virtual Republican lunchmate would like to see some sights. Ground Zero? Sure. It looks a lot different now than it did three years ago, and that plume of smoke that rose from the site for months has long since dissipated. Your party's Environmental Protection Agency Director insisted it was safe for us locals to breathe that cloud, except it wasn't after all. You've seen some of the security around Madison Square Garden for the convention, but if you want to see other protective measures that have been implemented since then, you might as well hop on a plane to Wyoming, because your party saw to it that they got 4 times as much homeland-security funding per capita as we did. Say, isn't Mr. Cheney from Wyoming?
Speaking of Mr. Cheney, wasn't that brave of him the other day to admit in public that he has a "gay daughter" -- usually the term is "lesbian," but we know what he means. And I bet it really makes that daughter feel loved to know that while her own father believes the question of same-sex marriage should be "left to the states," that approach would still leave her a second-class citizen without the approximately 1,600 federal rights reserved for heterosexuals. I know, I know -- a lot of Republicans are conservative Christians who insist that their religious biases must be written into the Constitution. That separation of church and state thing that brought our ancestors here from Europe and elsewhere centuries ago -- did Sept. 11 change that, too?
As I walk you back to your hotel -- or actually to the edge of the security zone around the convention -- we might pass some protesters. And there they are: it's the police. No, not the police arresting the protesters. Those police ARE protesters: exercising their right to free speech on their own time by calling attention to their stalled contract negotiations with the city (they've been working without a contract for two years). And look: behind them are the firefighters, also protesting. All this, just to welcome you.
Y'all come back when you can stay longer, Republicans. And be sure to look me up when you're in town so we can do lunch again.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @3:13 PM
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31.8.04 |
Last week: Crossfire. This week: Crosswire
Rocky Top Brigade founder South Knox Bubba, blogging the Republican Convention along with West Knox Mamma for the Knoxville News-Sentinel, has put me in the Crosswire. You might have to register there to read it, but it's free.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @6:19 PM
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30.8.04 |
Missed today's demonstrations? You can still exercise free speech from the comfort of your own home
Air America's Al Franken has come up with an easy way to speak out without ever leaving the house, without putting any extra strain on our already overburdened public safety resources, and still taking advantage of New York City's historic Peaceful Political Activists Discount Program.
If you didn't see much of today's long march through Manhattan, you can still watch it asynchronously on C-SPAN.
We also recommend C-SPAN for convention coverage without commentary or advertising.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @6:58 PM
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29.8.04 |
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