DocAmazing, (very bitter) LOL! Here in New England we’ve had some of the same fallout in miniature. One advantage of being as congested as we are is that each 10-mile-square township or city (there is *no* unincorporated land in the entire state of Massachusetts, I’m told) has at least two or three contingent towns to share its misery. Also, if you have to take a cab to the hospital, it’s a shorter ride.

Of course we have our glorious “Live Free or Die Trying” neighbor to the north proceeding stubbornly on its quest to become the true libertarian utopia. But all the yuppie scumsuckers… I mean, financial analysts & software technologists… who moved to New Hamster in their quest to avoid all contact with people not just like them are busy discovering that basing the state’s entire operating budget on property taxes has its limits once they have kids who need educating or elderly parents who need regular medical attention. It’s anecdotal, but I know of several cases where the same loudmouths who couldn’t shut up about the virtues of Right-Minded NH ten years ago are quietly relocating back to sorry old Taxachusetts. Or trying to do so, because all those jerry-built no-zoning condos in mushroom clusters an hour north of Boston are the very model for the Bursting of the Housing Bubble…

I’m always impressed with the heft of the voter information delivered to households. It’s nuts that someone has to assemble an opinion to be sure to vote the right way on cougar round-ups or whatever the issues are.

Bubba, as I understand it, the jagoff responsible for Prop 13 *intended* to make it impossible for the average voter to keep ahead of a wave of competing single-interest issues. He wanted to twist Norquist’s famous remark about “a government small enough to drown in a bathtub” and ensure that no responsible legislation could be passed by drowning the voters in a sea of trivia. In their eyes, it’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

*OK, so he’s not technically a woman, but I’m sure he’d pretend for the right price. I know I would.**

**In my case, “the right price� is a bag of chips. This is probably why I couldn’t get hired as an escort by the DC Madam- I’m just too cheap of a date.

[file for later use....]

Brad! D00d! The “DC Madame” fronted for actual male escorts as well! Strangely enough, the agents from Justice were only interested in the names and phone numbers of the female escorts. What, isn’t it about time for another prominent conservative (or twenty) to forcibly be ejected from the closet? I mean, it’s been months!
Also, just wonderin’: how many of her male escorts were listed by profession as “journalists”?

Hee hee hee

I’ve always thought the whole “Shock and Awe” idea was pretty telling. That is, that it was written by and approved by people who would crumble and piss themselves at a show of force, and would therefore assume that anyone else would do the same, not having bothered to check with anyone but cowardly yes-men about whether it’d work.

Maybe the quality of enemy soldiers has declined over the last couple decades, but in my experience the bad guys were entirely unimpressed by “dominant maeuvers” and spectacular displays of power”. We found repeatedly that the only reliable way to “destroy his will to fight” was to shoot him multiple times or drop a few thousand pounds of high explosives on his ass.

I think the problem in Iraq must be that nobody there read Ullman’s book…

mikey

Harlan Ullman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_K._Ullman

The guy who gave us shock and awe. According to wikipedia

“The doctrine of Shock and Awe was developed by Ullman and James. P. Wade and was a product of the National Defense University of the United States. It technically is known as “rapid dominance” and is a military doctrine based on the use of “overwhelming decisive force,” “dominant battlefield awareness,” “dominant maneuvers,” and “spectacular displays of power” to “paralyze” an adversary’s perception of the battlefield and destroy his will to fight.”

I apologize if I made anyone throw up a little in their mouth just now.

I’m always impressed with the heft of the voter information delivered to households. It’s nuts that someone has to assemble an opinion to be sure to vote the right way on cougar round-ups or whatever the issues are.

I saw this too. Struck me as odd. 4 o’clock on a sunday morning I could always attract a bunch of cops even without the towering inferno…

mikey

Speaking as a physician who practices in the Bay Area–yeah, things are pretty bad. We never recovered from Prop 13 (the taxpayers’ revolt, which cut services to the bone), and a lot of local politicians deferred increasing tax increases to pay for services during the dot.com boom, figuring free money would be falling from the virtual sky forever. Most of the area hospitals have been bought out by one or two chains and consolidated (which, since I didn’t go to business school, I think means “effectively closed”).

Here’s the bad news: if history’s any indication, you’ll be gettin’ the same treatment pretty soon. In the past, stupid shit hits California first, and we do the beta testing and release it on the rest of you. You all do remember Nixon and Reagan, right?

Frankly, if he’s in for a bag of chips he’s the king of cheap Lay’s.

Actually, the reason it is so vicious is that it is on Teh Left, and therefore unhinged.

Mikey, the detail that stuck with me: According to the late local news here in New England, the misfortunate tanker driver took a cab to a nearby hospital for the treatment of second-degree burns. Just how bad are public services in the SF area, if someone who’s just dumped a flaming tanker photogenically through an overpass decides, “Stuff waiting for the paramedics or the police to show up — I’ll just take a cab to the hospital”?

Or is this one of them “signs of the End Times” that all the Kewl Kidz are discussing?

we’ll have to compare notes tomorrow. I thnk it is going to be ugly no matter where you are going. Fremon-Sj maybe excepted, but otherwise… I mean, last I saw, North Bay-East Bay people were being advised to Ferry into SF, and then take BART over to Oakland. crazy.