String ‘em Up

Bill Kristol sure has come a long way from When Harry Met Sally.

(OK, we’ve been wanting to squeeze that in for years, and so now it’s out of the way and we can get on with things).

When speaking about Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Ft. Hood shooter, Kristol took Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to task for saying that Hasan would be “brought to justice”. Kristol said, in part, “to see her say that, that the number one priority is to bring him to justice is such a knee-jerk comment and such a stupid comment. He’s going to be brought to justice. He is not going to be innocent of murder. There are a lot of eyewitnesses to that. They should just go ahead and convict him and put him to death”.

To bring someone to justice is “knee-jerk” and “stupid”? Since when has America thrown out its criminal justice system and replaced it with vigilantism? Whatever happened to the rule of law that these conservatives love to talk about? Or is it only supposed to apply to Kristol and his cohorts on the right fringe?

Hasan’s crimes are heinous, and he should be held accountable for them in full, but to just “go ahead and convict him and put him to death” as Kristol suggests makes us as a society no better than Hasan, madly lashing out without thought, reason, or compassion, and does nothing for our understanding of why such things happen. And without understanding, you have, well, you have people like Kristol, egging on the lynch mobs from a TV studio, or, when he’s writing for The Weekly Standard, from the comfort of his warm, richly-appointed study, while his soldiers out in the street seethe with loathing for the elites with the bloated lifestyles which Kristol seems to think that he can enjoy without one day being swept up in the revolution he himself is sowing with his seeds of hatred, mistrust, and division.

Although, come to think of it, if we do things Kristol’s way, the knife can cut both ways.

We’re thinking about noted war criminal Dick Cheney here, whose high war crimes and misdemeanors are as clear and as obvious as the those of Hasan. Who broke the cover of a CIA agent in time of war (it was his war, and an unnecessary one at that, but it was still a war). In time of war, acts of treason such as this are punishable by death.

And so, why go to the effort, not to mention the expense, of a big, ugly trial that is sure to just stoke the fires of political strife well into 2010, and just convict and execute Cheney? This seems to us to be an ideal application of the Kristol method of criminal justice.

Hell, why not just pull a Jock Yablonski on the bastard, also taking out his wife and loud-mouthed daughter the way Tony Boyle did 40 years ago come New Year’s Eve? Lynn and Mary would just be, let’s see, how did Rumsfeld put it … oh yeah, “collateral damage”.

Yes, yes, these are just terrible things to say.

But is it any more terrible than just saying “to hell with a civil society”, and rushing to kill someone? Yes, it’s obvious that Hasan killed and injured a lot of people, but it’s also obvious that he wasn’t playing with a full deck when he did it. Do we just kill him, or does a society that likes to think of itself as civilized have other options?

An eye for an eye, as Ghandi famously said, just makes the whole world blind.

I’ll Have a Biscotti

In Sarah Palin’s upcoming memoir, Going Rogue, she writes that if she and Hillary Clinton were ever to meet for coffee that “I know that we would fundamentally disagree on many issues. But my hat is off to her hard work on the 2008 campaign trail”.

Now we learn that later today on Meet the Press, Hillary Clinton will be asked about this, in spite of the fact that as Secretary of State, she’s sort of got her hands full at the moment, going around the world, shoring up and repairing relations with, well, the entire rest of the planet, seeing as how they were so badly battered by eight years of arrogance and incompetence by the Bush/Cheney administration. In spite of all of this, the Associated Press reports that Clinton gamely takes the question at face value, saying that it would be “very interesting” to sit down and talk with Sarah.

Way to understate the case, Hillary. “Very interesting”?

Well, let’s listen in …

Palin: … and it’s just so important, don’tcha think, Hillary, that women like us show the other gals out there, the moms at home raising the kids while their husbands are God-knows where up on the North Slope doing whatever for months on end, that we’re just as good as those men and that we can run things too, like the biggest state there is, or even a country like you and me came so close to doing last year.

Clinton: Um, yes, well …

Palin: And we have all these things in common, Hillary, like how we were both bashed by the liberal media. Of course, not as much as I was, me and Todd and the kids, and especially Bristol, with all that pregnancy thing that the media blew completely out of proportion when all I was trying to do was take something awful and turn it around so that it would help my campaign, and I wasn’t exploiting Bristol and Levi, well maybe I was, but isn’t that something that you would have done in my shoes ? Because you know how the media can be. They don’t believe in the flag and the troops and they’re not like the average Jane and Joe who have to work two jobs to put mooseburgers on the table and have to go out and hunt so that they have food to tie them over the winter, like Todd and me and some of the regular folks that we know in back in Wasilla. So when the media attacks us because Bristol gets knocked-up, we fight back just like regular tax-paying Americans do, so it’s not exploiting Bristol when we do that, and besides, Hillary, I’m sure that if your daughter got pregnant just when it started to look like all your dreams for power and glory were about to come true, you’d do the same thing too …

Clinton: Well now, I don’t think so, Governor …

Palin: … Ex-Governor, Hillary, because as you know I quit being governor of Alaska because of the lame-duckness that I wanted to avoid so that I could go out and make changes and move forward telling the American people “like it is” about how the liberals want to have Nazi stormtroopers drag us out of our beds and ask us how we want to die just so that we can have socialized medicine like they do in England, who, hey, didn’t we fight a war in 1776 to get away from them and their king and his doctors who work for the state? Now, I’m not talking about you, Hillary, but some of the people that you work for, you know, like President Obama and that Rahm guy, who does he think he is anyway ? You know there are just too many …

Clinton: Now wait a minute, Sarah …

Palin: … people like that, and I don’t know how any self-respecting, glass-ceiling busting gal like you could put up working with a bunch of folks who want us to change this country into Soviet Russia by making us turn everything over to the government so that grandma has to pick out the urn where they’ll put her ashes because she’s not allowed to even get a coffin anymore because the bureaucrats are telling her now that she’ll have to be cremated, which is not even Christian, because if you don’t have a body when the Rapture comes, then you won’t even be able to rise up again, and all because now we’re becoming like Germany in the 1930, and I know, and I think that you know that regular folks, the ones who make America the shining beacon of liberty that it is, with freedom, troops, low taxes, Glenn Beck, and keeping those Mexicans in their lawless country where they belong instead of cleaning our hotels …

Clinton: How can you think like that, when …

Palin: … and don’t get me wrong, Hillary, we need clean hotels, car wash attendants, people to cut our grass and pick our vegetables, but by Americans, regular folks who love God, the troops, the flag flapping in the breeze, and aren’t afraid to tell it like it is to those people who would make us slaves in our own country and throw out all the freedoms that have made this the greatest country that God ever blessed. That’s how Todd says it, you know, he thinks that God has really blessed us, not just America, but our family, with Bristol and Willow, Track, Trig, and the twins, Brace and Bit, and even though we’ve had some stumble bumps in our marriage, we are persevering because that’s what Americans do, and well you certainly know about that don’t you, Hillary? And that’s what I admire about you the most, how you stood by your man in spite of all the lying, the bimbos, and the cigars …

Clinton (to waiter): CHECK …

OMT Weekend

Well, it’s Friday (the 13th, no less), and here at OMT, we’re gearing up for what looks as though it might be the second red-letter weekend in a row, weatherwise, and we’re looking to get out of the newsroom early.

So instead of doing a slam-piece on Sarah Palin’s book tour, or expressing our indignation over the latest right-wing stupidity du jour, either of which would require us to conjure up a mood that is at variance with this splendid weather that we’re having today, we’re going to do what any blogger worth his salt would do in this situation; take the easy way out.

Today’s way of doing that involves a piece from Britian’s The Guardian, that is little more than a slide-show, really, but which reports on something that we think is a great idea; The Royal College of Art’s 2009 Secret Auction, an annual event in which famous artists (and not-so-famous art students) are commissioned to produce original post-cards, which are then auctioned off for charity.

This gives the average schmuck in the street the opportunity to own an original piece by a someone like Yoko Ono, for example, at an affordable price.

Of course the trick is, the work is signed on the back, so you won’t know whose piece you’re buying until you plunk down your money. That’s the “secret” part. This both keeps the price reasonable, and ensures that you are buying something you really want. It also has the added benefit of leveling the playing field between the pain-in-the-ass investor types and upstanding, salt-of-the-earth citizens like you and we.

We think that an event like this is something that perhaps Pittsburgh’s own Andy Warhol Museum should consider doing, so that we can get in on the fun, too. We figure that the Warhol has the chops to attract some really top-shelf artists. And Pittsburgh doesn’t exactly suffer from a paucity of art students, either.

Of course, God forbid that lowly little us should make a suggestion to the local art crowd … snooty bastards …

Step Away From Your Computer, Sir

Gary Wisniewski, ex-Pittsburgher and best friend of OMT who now spends his days in Melbourne, Australia, sent us this link to an article in The Atlantic the other day, which hits hard on a topic that has been close to home for us for a number of years now. Like us, Gary has spent his career in technology, and while we have always looked at this business through a somewhat jaundiced eye, Gary, long enamored of all things digital, is only now beginning to reassess his feelings about the information “superhighway”, what it’s turned into over the course of the past few decades, and the impact that it’s having on the way we think and behave.

The article, Is Google Making us Stupid?, by Nicholas Carr, is one of the best we’ve read on this subject in years. We think it should be required reading for anyone who is blissfully enamored of their high-speed Internet connection. Unfortunately, as Carr so astutely points out, those who would most benefit from what he has to say may no longer have the attention span to absorb it.

All you have to do is look at the expression on the face of George Spiridonakos, pictured in this piece from our news partners over at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, not to mention the subject of the PG article, and you will immediately appreciate Carr’s point.

Here at OMT, of course, we would like to have as many readers as we can get. But if you want to step away from the computer and take some much-needed cognitive rehabilitation, we’ll certainly understand.

Stupidity on the March

Fear has a most fascinating ability to purge the human mind of all traces of reason. Last week’s Ft. Hood tragedy, which conservatives are now spinning as something of a “9/11 Lite”, is a case in point. Perpetrated by a Muslim army psychiatrist who was apparently unable to diagnose his own madness, Muslims everywhere are now being held up as scapegoats and threats to our national security by people on the Right who, in many cases, are no more mentally sound than Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

For example, noted hatemonger Pat Robertson has chimed in with his view that Islam is “not a religion”, and that “we should treat it as such and treat its adherents as such as we would members of the Communist Party or members of some fascist group”.

Well now, what does this mean, anyway? How exactly do we “treat” communists here in America?

Pete Seeger is a lifelong communist, and last May he was treated to a star-studded 90th birthday party at Madison Square Garden, with everyone from Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie, and Emmylou Harris to Dave Matthews, Richie Havens, and Billy Bragg, who enthusiastically sang part of his revised version of that communist dittie, “The Internationale”, with lyrics he wrote at Seeger’s behest and that were subsequently published in the Industrial Workers of the World’s “Little Red Songbook” alongside the original lyrics that used to bring a tear to Lenin’s eye.

As for how we treat fascists, one only need look at the fact that Dick Cheney is still free to move about the country, spewing his nonsense about how President Obama is making America less safe, while being held blissfully unaccountable for his high war crimes and other misdemeanors committed while he and his henchmen ran roughshod over the Constitution and the Bill of Rights for eight years.

Is that what Pat Robertson means when he says that Muslims should be treated like communists or fascists?

Of course, Robertson can always be counted on for working on the very cutting edge of hate-speech, setting new standards for intolerance every time he opens his mouth in front of a camera. Since the death of Jerry Falwell, who passed Christ’s message of love for one’s neighbor through a funhouse mirror and made a fortune for himself fostering hatred wherever he found an opening, Robertson quickly filled the void as America’s hobgoblinizer-in-chief, quick to demonize Muslims, feminists, gays, Jews, liberals, Chinese, and just about anyone else who doesn’t subscribe to his “you gotta hate in order to love” world view.

The danger, of course, is that those who fall under Robertson’s evil spell are stupid by definition, and so when they attempt to walk the path that Robertson and Falwell have blazed, they often slip on a banana peel.

And so we have the curious case of Marine reservist Jasen D. Bruce, who was approached on a Tampa, Florida street by visiting Greek Orthodox priest Alexios Marakis. Father Marakis was lost, saw Bruce and stopped, got out of his car and asked Bruce, in broken English, for directions. Without a word, Bruce, believing that Father Marakis was an Arab terrorist, struck the hapless priest in the head with a tire iron. He then proceeded to chase the priest for three blocks. And, like so many of his generation, he even multi-tasked; calling 911 as he was chasing the priest and reporting that that an Arabic man was trying to rob him.

So, like an Italian who is beaten senseless by moronic anti-Semites because they mistake him for a Jew, an Orthodox priest suffers the indignity of an assault by some idiot whose mind is so full of hate that there is no room for reason.

In a schizophrenic America where, on the one hand we celebrate the notion of a “melting pot” while on the other hand we preach the politics of exclusion, we should not be surprised at such things.

In an America where ignorance is prized, and being uninformed, uneducated, and uncultured is increasingly becoming a badge of honor, reinforced by those on TV whose stock in trade is hate, who plant the seeds of fear in minds all too fertile, and who disguise themselves as preachers and newsmen, without even the suggestion of accountability, the very freedoms which define who we are as a nation are at risk.

For all our fear of outside threats, the greatest threat to America lies within.

And it’s not the communists, the fascists, or the Muslims. Those who are screaming the loudest about the dangers of outsiders are those whom we should fear the most.

For theirs is the way of darkness.

Heart of Gold

Dr. Jeremy Morris, the British epidemiologist who was the first to correlate the relationship between aerobic exercise and cardiac health has died just 6 months shy of his 100th birthday. The cause of death was pneumonia and kidney failure. His heart kept beating strongly right up until the end, strengthened no doubt by the exercise regimen of swimming, walking or pedaling on an exercise bike which he practiced well into his mid 90s. He knew exactly what he was doing.

Science had long known that there seemed to be a relationship between people who were active and a lower incidence of heart attacks, but until 60 years ago when Dr. Morris did his study of drivers and conductors on those double-decker buses that are emblematic of London, no one had the empirical evidence to back it up. Dr. Morris noticed that while the drivers were sedentary for nearly their entire shift, the conductors were walking all through the buses from front to back and up and down the stairs. In fact, the conductors climbed around 600 stairs throughout the course of their shifts. After studying them for four years, Dr. Morris published data that showed that the drivers had more than twice the number of heart attacks as the conductors.

And it turns out that the conductor’s weight wasn’t as much of a factor as the fact that they were moving it around. Dr. Morris even got the sizes of the trousers that were issued to the drivers and conductors by London’s transportation agency and used this data to show that, while in the main the conductors were generally slimmer than the drivers overall, this alone did not explain away their advantage over the drivers. The conductors were still much less prone to heart attacks whether they were slim, average or heavy. It was the fact that they were always on the move that made all the difference.

To solidify his theory, Dr. Morris did a study of postal workers, comparing those who were out delivering the mail, either walking or on bicycles, with those whose jobs kept them back at the main office. Again, the guys that were up and doing had a far lower incidence of heart attacks.

By the time he completed his eight-year study of 18,000 civil servants in sedentary jobs, which showed that those who engaged in some kind of aerobic exercise in their off hours — swimming, cycling, running, fast walking, or sports in general — were able to reduce the likelihood of a heart attack by more than half, everybody started jumping on Dr. Morris’ bandwagon, and the modern aerobic exercise movement was born.

Dr. Morris was born in Liverpool on May 6, 1910 to a family of Polish Jews who had fled the pogroms. Upon arrival in England, his father changed the family name to that of the name of the captain of the ship that had brought them to their new life. Jeremy was born a few weeks later.

He exercised all of his life, even as a young boy, accompanying his father on four-mile walks, for which his father would reward him with ice cream. Proving, we suppose, that you can even eat toxic sludge like ice cream if you have the good sense to work it off.

His research not only proved the importance of exercise in staving off heart trouble, but also revolutionized the treatment of those who had already had a heart attack. Previously, doctors thought that once you had a heart attack, you were on your way out and that there was little to be done. Dr. Morris showed in a study of longshoremen that exercising even after a heart attack was of great benefit, and could even prevent a recurrence.

His groundbreaking work laid the foundations for future research in cardiology, and opened an entirely new window of understanding into the mechanisms of the human body.

Had his parents not fled the pogroms, he may not have even been born.

We have to wonder whether or not the guy who might have cured cancer died in some Nazi concentration camp.

Some Thoughts for a Monday

In the “How Time Flies” department, John Lennon would have been 69 years old today. His son Sean, born on John’s 35th birthday and a pop star in his own right, is celebrating his 34th. Yoko, incredibly, is 76 and still going strong, still a very active artist, and regularly in the news. She recently recorded a new version of John’s “Give Peace a Chance” along with Sean and Julian, John’s son by first wife Cynthia, who has apparently gotten over his very public row with Yoko over money and his father’s legacy a few years ago. The song is available at iTunes.

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In an example of tabloid journalism in full overdrive, the New York Daily News has brought together Sarah Palin’s ne’er-do-well-almost-son-in-law, Levi Johnston, and cable-TV train wreck, Jon Gosselin for a photo shoot in Times Square. Of course, the photo shoot everyone in the media is waiting for is Levi’s upcoming nude spread in Playgirl Magazine, along with the accompanying article in which Levi dishes the dirt on our girl Sarah. Levi’s reportedly been working with a trainer for the past two months to get properly buffed up for his photographic cotillion, and has been showing up at all the hot spots around the Big Apple.

Thank you, John McCain, for opening up this Pandora’s tackle box. It’s really frightening when you consider how close this country came to electing him, along with the whack-job grandmother of Levi’s love child.

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Speaking of whack-jobs, Tom Cruise was in the news recently for offering to “beat the living shit” out of disobedient members of his Scientology fringe-cult-religion-freak-show. Cruise, who is apparently one of the high priests of the sect and close pal of Scientology pope David Miscavige, was due to visit a prison-like facility that the faith runs, known among adherents as “The Hole,” where three Scientology “managers” were being held for unspecified infractions. On the day before the Cruise visit, the managers were engaged in a “Tom Cruise arrival preparation drill,” in which they rehearsed “every action they would perform in the presence of Cruise”.

That same day, Miscavige read the other managers the riot act for being too soft with the three miscreants, because they “refused to beat them to pulps”. Saying that Tom had “vowed to come to The Hole and personally beat the living shit” out of the three hapless managers if the other managers refused to do it, Miscavige urged them to take action, apparently so that Tom wouldn’t have to get his hands dirty.

Whereupon they did; “In response, the mob rushed at the three targeted gentlemen. Fists flew and feet kicked into the three. They continued to pound until … each had two black eyes”, according to Marty Rathbun, one of Miscavige’s most trusted advisers, or at least he was until he spilled the beans about the inner workings of Scientology.

Rathbun better watch his ass, or Tom will hunt him down and kick the shit out of him.

Of course, we may be treating Scientology unfairly when we describe it as a “fringe cult” and a “freak show”. What is a religion, after all, but a small cadre of powerful authoritarians with anger management issues being supported in their sadism by a large, weak, cowed, stupid rank-and-file?

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Actress Anna Friel, in the middle of a song in a revival of Breakfast at Tiffany’s at London’s West End theater, had her performance interrupted this past weekend by screams emanating from the audience. It seems that an audience member in one of the upper balconies vomited over the edge of the balcony, and six unfortunate audience members below were showered with emesis. The enraged theatergoers apparently caused quite a commotion, but Friel, trooper that she is, kept right on singing, although, Friel says, she “almost lost my way as there was such a noise coming from the seats. I almost lost it, but I’m proud I kept my concentration”.

The six vomitees were escorted out to be cleaned up, and returned to their seats after the intermission. The vomitor returned much later, but was able to catch the end of the performance.

No word on any post-performance confrontations.

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This seems like a good enough place to stop.

Highway 376, Revisited

We drive Pittsburgh’s Penn/Lincoln Parkway East (I-376) between the Edgewood/Swissvale and Monroeville exits on our daily commute, and we’ve noticed recently that they’ve started re-numbering the exits. As part of a very good idea that is being horribly executed, it has been decided to extend Interstate 376 for an additional 70 miles from its current terminus at the Fort Pitt Bridge in downtown Pittsburgh, over the bridge, through the tunnel, all the way out the Parkway West, past the airport, following the current PA Route 60 corridor, crossing over the Turnpike again in Beaver County, and eventually all the way to the junction with Interstate 80 near New Castle. This means that the Edgewood/Swissvale exit, formerly exit 7, becomes exit 77, the Wilkinsburg/Forest Hills exit, formerly exit 8, is now exit 78, and so on, reflecting the conversion of exit numbers on Pennsylvania freeways a few years back from a sequential system to one which indicates the number of miles from either the start of a highway or from the state line.

We say “a good idea that is being horribly executed” for what we think is a number of sound reasons. Pittsburgh is probably the only city of any significant size whose airport is not served by an Interstate highway. Instead, motorists, many of whom are visitors unfamiliar with the peculiarities of Pittsburgh’s roadways, are forced to navigate a mismash of various state, federal and Interstate routes to get from the airport to the city. PA 60 becomes US 22/30, before finally encountering an Interstate (279), all along what is basically the same corridor. Coupled with our woefully inadequate system of freeways in and around the city, it really is something of a civic embarrassment, and hardly the kind of first impression the city should be giving to visitors, the view as you exit the Fort Pitt Tunnels to downtown notwithstanding.

So, short of giving Pittsburgh a decent system of freeways, the sort of thing that some other Pennsylvania cities, say, Harrisburg or Scranton, already have, designating the freeway at Pittsburgh International Airport an Interstate highway is at least a step in the right direction.

That’s the good idea that we referred to.

And it would have been an easy thing to do, as well. Pittsburgh is already served by major Interstates 76 and 79, and by three of their subsidiary routes, 376, 279 and 579. After I-279 South terminates at the I-79 interchange, the Parkway continues out toward the airport as US 22 and 30, until they, too, veer off at the Steubenville Pike exit, taking the Penn/Lincoln Parkway along with them. From this point, PA 60 takes over the corridor as the Airport Parkway.

As a highway, these sections of the Parkway West and the Airport Parkway meet Interstate standards already; indeed a large section of PA 60 is a part of the Pennsylvania Turnpike system, and is a toll road, although not the part that approaches the airport from the city.

It would seem to us that the most cost-effective way to get an Interstate highway at Pittsburgh International Airport would be to designate the Parkway corridor from the I-79/279 junction and beyond as an Interstate highway.

Interstate 479, say.

We don’t pull “Interstate 479” out of our ass, either. There is a method to the numbering of the Interstate Highway System, planned and designed over 50 years ago by some very smart people. They wanted to design a numbering scheme which would allow motorists, no matter where they happened to be, to chart their course in a very general way, and avoid the congestion of cities, simply by the number of the highway that they were on and those that they encountered along their journey.

For example, one and two-digit Interstates are the main lines. Even numbered routes (10, 24, 70, 86, 90) are east/west routes. Odd numbered routes (15, 35, 79, 81) are north/south routes. Furthermore, low-numbered routes were assigned in the west and the south, while higher-numbered routes were assigned in the east and the north. Thus, Interstate 8 is in southern California and Arizona, I-15 runs up and down the west coast, I-10 travels the southern tier from California to Florida, I-80 runs from New York City to San Francisco, I-95 from Maine to Florida, and I-91 through Connecticut and Vermont.

Three-digit Interstates are loops or bypasses through or around a city, or spurs into a city. This is determined by the first digit in the designation. A three-digit route starting with a 2, 4, 6, or 8 constitutes a complete loop or link from one main-line Interstate back on to itself or another. Thus, Pittsburgh’s Interstate 279 begins at the junction with Interstate 79 at the Parkway West, and travels into Pittsburgh, across the rivers at The Point and up into the North Hills, where it eventually re-links with Interstate 79 just south of Wexford. In this case, it links back up with the same highway (I-79), but it doesn’t necessarily have to. If there were a 3-digit highway that started at Interstate 79 and ended at Interstate 76, for example, it too would need an even-number for the first digit; I-876, or perhaps, I-679. The rule is that they start and end at a main line Interstate.

Three-digit Interstates that begin with 1, 3, 5, 7, or 9, however, are spurs which, for the most part, lead into a city. These start at an Interstate (usually a main line, although not necessarily), and they end either at the junction of another three-digit Interstate, or they fizzle out altogether, ending unceremoniously somewhere deep within the bowels of the city.

Thus, here in Pittsburgh, Interstate 376 starts at the junction with the Pennsylvania Turnpike (I-76), and ends (or, used to, anyway) at the Fort Pitt Bridge, at the junction with I-279. Pittsburgh also has Interstate 579, which is spawned from I-279 at the Veterans’ Bridge on the North Side, runs the Crosstown Expressway corridor, and then ends abruptly as it approaches the ramps to the Liberty Bridge.

It’s not a terribly complicated system, and once you understand it, you can pretty much drive on the Interstates throughout the country with just a general idea of where you are going, and make judgments based on the routes you encounter along the way. You still need a map, of course, but the system makes sense, and is particularly useful when trying to avoid traffic jams as you approach urban areas. It has a logical foundation, which is not something we’re used to encountering every day, and so when we do, we welcome it.

There are some minor exceptions, of course, mostly ushered in fairly recently by people whose brains were too small to grasp the intricacies of the system’s methodology, but overwhelmingly it has retained its integrity for over fifty years, which is something else that we’re not accustomed to, quite frankly.

So, when we say that the Parkway West/Airport Parkway section should be designated Interstate 479, we are following the rules that dictate that since the highway would begin at the junction of main line Interstate 79 and would run all the way to main line Interstate 80, it should be a three-digit Interstate, starting with an even number. As 279 is already occupied in the Pittsburgh region, 479 is both available and appropriate.

Actually, it could also be Interstate 880, since either I-79 or I-80 could serve as the basis for the designation. 880 would be the only choice in this instance, because I-280 is in use in eastern Pennsylvania, I-480 in Cleveland, and I-680 in the Youngstown, Ohio area. The closest I-880 in the system is in San Francisco, which is far enough away that it would be permissible for us to use it in Pennsylvania. So as you can see, there are rules about proximity, too.

But we’ll stick with I-479, because Pittsburgh is more of a 79 town than an 80 town.

Of course, we are being logical about all of this, and when one expects logic from one’s public servants, one is more likely than not to be disappointed. And so, perhaps inevitably, our simple, logical solution is not what we’re getting.

Rather, as we indicated at the outset, they’re extending I-376 all the way to I-80, which immediately breaks the system. With this change, I-376 is no longer a spur, but a link between two main lines, thereby disqualifying it for its “3″. Damaging the system still further, Interstate 279 will be terminated, after a “transition period”, at its junction with I-376 at the Fort Pitt Bridge. This will make it a spur, and no longer a loop between two sections of I-79, which means that it no longer deserves its “2″. During this “transition”, the section of the Parkway West between the Ft. Pitt Bridge and I-79 will be marked as both I-279 and I-376 simultaneously, thereby adding to the general confusion.

That’s the horrible execution that we referred to.

In order to correct this under the current plan, I-376 would need to be changed to I-876 (276, 476 and 676 are in use near Philadelphia) in order to reflect its new configuration. Additionally, I-279 would have to change to I-179 (or 379, 779, etc.). Of course, now it’s starting to become a real mess.

In the alternative, they could have left the whole damn thing alone, and do what we suggested, which is to designate the Parkway West/Airport Parkway from the I-79 junction and beyond all the way up to I-80 as Interstate 479. That way, we get our airport Interstate highway, and the system still works.

We suggested this to PennDOT in a letter some time ago, which they dismissed with a, yas, yas, we know, but we’ve already started working on it, and who gives a fuck besides you, anyway?

Or words to that effect.

OK, so that’s a discussion of the topic from the anal-retentive approach of not breaking a working system; let’s now look at it from a cost effectiveness standpoint, in these times of fiscal distress.

If we do it our way, the only new signage that has to be installed is that along the Parkway West/Airport Parkway and then along the rest of PA 60 up to I-80. New overhead signs, new roadside designation signs, the renumbering of the exits, new roadside mileage-marker signs, and new signs on other routes as they approach each interchange.

That’s pretty much it.

On the other hand, doing it their way, extending I-376 from its current terminus to Interstate 80, includes everything from our plan, PLUS:

Renumbering all of the exits on the current I-376 corridor between the Turnpike and downtown, along with new roadside mileage markers. Renumbering all of the exits on what is left of the Interstate 279 corridor, and new roadside mileage markers. Also, on the section that is currently I-279 from the Ft. Pitt Bridge to I-79 going toward the airport (which will now be I-376), we’ll need new overhead signage, new road designation signs, the renumbering of exits, new roadside mileage-marker signs, and new signs on other routes as they approach the interchanges.

We’d also like to point out that much of the signage that is being replaced on the current I-376 is only a few years old, installed during the rehabilitation of the Parkway East over the past couple of years.

Not that it figures into the cost … we’d just like to point that out.

So let’s review: We’re breaking a logical highway numbering system that has functioned well for over half a century, and doing it in such a way as to cost the taxpayers more dollars (almost $2 million more) than it would have cost if we’d done it the right way in the first place.

And everybody wonders why we can’t seem to raise the funds to build the Mon Valley Expressway and the Southern Beltway. Maybe it’s because we’re throwing money away being stupid.

And who’s brilliant idea was all of this?

It was the brainchild of Rick Santorum and Melissa Hart, who jointly pushed it through while they were still in office. We can still remember them touting the fact that they were “bringing an Interstate highway to our airport” in the run up to the 2006 election in which the voters handed both of them their asses. They made it sound like they were building a brand new highway when all it was going to amount to was a superficial change that, in their way of doing it, ended up costing the taxpayers more money than it needed to. And fucking up the Interstate Highway System in the bargain.

Two simple-minded Republican fascist morons who didn’t bother to figure out the right way to get the job done, and to hell with the extra taxpayer’s money involved. And the Republicans are the party that are always blaming the Democrats for “wasteful spending”.

But then, it takes a wasteful spender to know a wasteful spender.

Happy motoring.

Either Way, We Win

Yesterday, we endorsed the candidacy of Conservative Party neo-fascist Doug Hoffman in the special election in New York’s 23d Congressional district, which spans the northern tier of the state from the eastern shores of Lake Ontario all the way to the border with Vermont. As we noted in the piece, we were hoping Hoffman would win because his victory, we felt, would give the right wingnuts that are currently running things in the Republican Party the juice they needed to slam the party so far to the right that it would break political ground not disturbed since 1930s Europe.

Alas, it was not to be.

Democrat Bill Owens became the first of his party to win that district’s seat in anyone’s memory, beating Hoffman 49 to 46 percent. A squeaker if there ever was one, until you ponder the facts.

New York’s rural 23d district, and upstate New York in general, has been a Republican stronghold since the 19th century. Not unlike Pennsylvania, once you get out of New York’s urban areas, this is a blue state that is as red in the middle as an underdone sirloin. Unlike Pennsylvania, however, New York’s Republicans aren’t typical of the radical fringe that has grabbed the reigns of power in the party in recent years, and they sure as hell don’t like it when outsiders come in and tell them who they should vote for.

Which is just what happened here. When the district Republicans nominated Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, who was pro-choice and favored gay marriage, the right wing nutosphere descended on the 23d in droves, denouncing Scozzafava and pumping over $1 million into the campaign coffers of Hoffman, a political neophyte from Lake Placid, which isn’t even in the district. They managed to drive Scozzafava from the race last Saturday.

But those plucky New Yorkers gave the back of their hand to Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Tim Palwlenty, and the rest of the authoritarian morons, as they sent a Democrat to Washington almost to spite these nebby nabobs of negativism. The 23d district of New York put a hash-mark in the “keep out of our fucking business” column, and pushed the right wing back to the corner to lick their wounds and contemplate their next stupid move.

And we’ve got another Democrat in Congress to boot. Sure, he only won by 3 percentage points. But that he won at all in a district that is as red as the flag of communist China speaks volumes about how drunk with self-delusion the extreme right is when it comes to their chances of rolling back to power on the wave of racist, homophobic, authoritarian stupidity that they have somehow convinced themselves is rising up in America.

Not a bad outcome, in the main, even if we did waste our endorsement.

Besides, the Republican Party is already on an irreversible trajectory to doom, and this minor setback is not going to sway them. We can all watch in horror and fascination as their party disintegrates into a frenzy of vicious backbiting and outrageous acts of political suicide. Remember, it was the Republicans themselves that unleashed these forces back in the 80s, and it’s only fitting that it is the Republican Party that is ultimately consumed by them.

Rock on, Sarah …

Things That Go Bump on the Right

Here at OMT, we’re nothing if not mercurial. Just when you thought you had us pegged, we up and do something completely off the wall, shaking the very foundations of your beliefs in who we are and what we stand for.

We do this on purpose, of course, because we’ve found that it’s important to keep people off balance. People need to be reminded every once in a while that we live in an unpredictable world, and that if you let your guard down for even a second, you’re going to get your ass handed to you in ways you would never have suspected.

So it is that OMT endorses the candidacy of Conservative Doug Hoffman in the upstate New York House race today.

What, you say? OMT is endorsing a far-right conservative in a race in which the traditional Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, was hounded by right-wing movers and shakers as being “too liberal”, and was eventually forced to drop out of the race?

Yes. That’s right. We’re for Hoffman.

Hoffman is a moronic, bible-thumping, Ku Klux Klan wannabe, with an intellect that rivals that of George W. Bush, whose politics are somewhat to the right of Benito Mussolini. Hoffman is representative of the direction in which the purists believe the party must move if they are ever to regain power.

About a month ago, OMT honey-girl Sarah Palin made headlines by endorsing Hoffman over Scozzafava, the actual Republican nominee, because Scozzafava was pro-choice and in favor of gay marriage. These two positions made her an anathema to far-right thinkers everywhere from Palin, to Glenn Beck, to Shawn Hannity, all of whom blasted her relentlessly, saying that they couldn’t believe that someone with such radical beliefs managed to win the nomination of the Republican Party. After she was hounded into stepping down, and as a way of signaling that the Republican Party has become openly hostile to anyone who doesn’t tow their authoritarian line, Scozzafave endorsed her Democratic rival, Bill Owens, on her way out the door.

This act of disloyalty incensed Republican Party chairman Rush Limbaugh, who long ago branded her as a RINO (Republican In Name Only … isn’t Rush clever?). He went so far as to say about Scozzafava on his show the other day, “We can say she is guilty of widespread bestiality. She has screwed every RINO in the country”.

This from a man who was arrested in Florida back in the 70s for engaging in “unspeakable acts” in a stable at a racetrack in Sarasota, and who in the 80s was investigated by Interpol for trafficking in Vietnamese potbellied pigs for “lewd and lascivious purposes”. If anyone can speak with authority about sexual congress with livestock, it’s our boy Rush.

Of course, the OMT legal team advises us to include this disclaimer that the above paragraph is only an example of the kind of humor writing that our readers have come to expect from OMT, and in no way reflects Rush Limbaugh’s actual sexual proclivities. Indeed, we have it on somewhat shaky authority that Rush suffers from a genetic condition called micropenis and that his member is actually too small to engage in any kind of meaningful sexual activity, beyond self-manipulation with a pair of tweezers and a magnifying glass, and even then his furtive gropings produce little result.

But we digress …

Actually, we endorse Hoffman because his election would signal that the Republican Party is well on their way to shedding all pretense of reason as they move toward the final implosion that will render them a minor, regional party, something we have been predicting for some time now. A Hoffman win will be a Pyrrhic victory for them, as it gives the party license to go ever further down a road that the majority of Americans have no stomach for. The Republican Party is a party of the past, a party that wants to preserve everything that, under their leadership for the past decade, has brought America to the brink of economic, political and military collapse. Although the Republicans somehow managed to miss it, we’re living in a new century, with new challenges, new threats, and a new world order; doing things by the 20th century’s rule book, sprinkled liberally (forgive us) with authoritarianism, racial hatred, and enforced ignorance is not the way forward. If the Republican Party wants to embrace the politics of ignorance, the politics of old white men, the politics of mistrust, paranoia, and stupidity for all, enlightenment for none, then we say, have at it, baby. Knock yourselves out.

At OMT, we welcome this development. Let Palin and company have complete control of the Republican Party. And if a decisive victory for Doug Hoffman helps to bring that about, we heartily endorse it.

It just means that there will be fewer and fewer of them in positions of power in the long run. And that’s something we can all get behind.

So relax. Some things never change.