Posted on 04/23/2004 10:47:01 AM PDT by GOPcapitalist
as far as I know there is no Texas Forum on FR. You're not listed as a member of the Houston Area Texans (HAT) which would be the logical place for to post your original but obscure find, so where is it?
I did find your October 10th 2003 posting of the METRO Money Train story, but that was at least a week after it was written up in the Houston Review. You also properly credited the source, and provided the appropriate link back to the TTM website. However there is no mention back then of your involvement with breaking the story, why is that?
It seems to me that if you really did send the story to TTM and they used it, that would be something to mention when you posted it on FR on October 10th 2003. Instead you waited almost seven months, reposted some info singling out STV, and claimed credit for an original find with nary a word about all that had transpired before.
Now if you didn't claim originality for breaking the story back then, why are you trying to do so now? Inquiring minds want to know...
-btw feel free to respond in whichever persona you prefer (lol).
There is right here: http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/profiles?location=91
I did find your October 10th 2003 posting of the METRO Money Train story, but that was at least a week after it was written up in the Houston Review.
IIRC it was posted only a day or two after the story came up. Considering that the Houston Review was one of the sources I tipped off to the ethics records at the time it is unsurprising that they ran it when they did.
You also properly credited the source, and provided the appropriate link back to the TTM website.
Yep, cause it was a news article and that's what the forum's rules say to do.
However there is no mention back then of your involvement with breaking the story, why is that?
No need. Those who knew my involvement in finding the data did so upon reading it on the Texas forum. Those who didn't read it there didn't really care.
It seems to me that if you really did send the story to TTM and they used it, that would be something to mention when you posted it on FR on October 10th 2003.
Not really. Posting some silly message to that end would detract away from the story itself. Once again, those who knew about it already got that info on the Texas forum.
Instead you waited almost seven months, reposted some info singling out STV
It took 7 months for Metro to sign the contract. I posted this on the day they signed it.
btw feel free to respond in whichever persona you prefer (lol).
Why should I waste my time inventing another posting name when this one works fine? If you still think YCT, HC et al are pseudonyms for myself take it up with them. I am certain they will disagree quite vocally.
Yeah, and imagine another million or so fat smelly people cramming onto those already smelly, slow moving, and overcrowded rail cars if all the highways suddenly dissappeared.
I've never ridden in a smelly train.
So you say, but human tendency dictates that people tend to become desensitized to offensive odors when the live amidst them on a daily basis. Take NYC for example. As an outsider, I found the pervasive urine smell coming from every sidewalk, inlet, ally, street corner, vent and awning to be nauseating and repulsive. The locals probably don't even notice it any longer because they've lived around it for so long. Train riding will do the same to you.
Lacking mass transit, Houston could not possibly be built to the density achieved in the northeast or Chicago, even if you folks wanted to,w hcih I very much doubt.
...which is my point. We do not WANT a dense city and if you don't like that, tough for you. Go live in a concrete NYC cubicle.
No amount of highways could handle all the peak demand to get into Chicago, or Manhattan, or Philadelphia, or Boston, or DC.
DC probably could if they did it smart and if they had invested in better highways decades ago like they should have (Case in point: I-66 is a mere two lanes in either direction from the beltway to downtown! Plus, it's the only major western route into and out of the city save the toll road).
To which I say GREAT! I like big roads. You entirely missed my point though. You claimed that big roads and old style towns are incompatable, which is patently false. Once again, just go to the Texas hill country and look at the wide streets in the old towns. You'll see century old buildings on the side of 4 and 6 lane roads.
Again, you fail to realize the reasons for this. (1) The hosues were there first.
Wrong. I just drove up I-95 the other day and what did I see? Housing projects being crammed in every little nook and cranny that the freeway could handle plus huge sound walls going in along side of them.
(2) Land is expensive and must be expensively worked to build highways in much of the country.
No, not "much of the country." Try yankeeland and california. Despite the pervasive Yank-o-centric attitudes you exhibit, y'all are the exception in this country, not the rule.
Must you folks be such pompous asses?
Projecting again, eh Hermann? I don't believe I've ever demanded that your city stop building smelly trains for its smelly inhabitants. You on the other hand have been ranting against highways from the day you arrived on this thread and telling us how horrible we are for liking them so much.
I'd dare say my little slice of America is quite a bit more "real" than your bland interchangeable suburb of Anywhere, USA.
You may speculate to that end, but it is unlikely you have a basis for comparison in light of your earlier admission that you don't ever use highways and don't ever go anywhere.
Do you even know enough geography to recognize that I live west of the Hudson River?
Did I say you lived on the other side of it? No. I said there are some yankees not unlike yourself who think that the civilized world stops when one crosses it. I then noted by extension that there are even more yankees who recognize the world to continue beyond it, only to stop at the Mason Dixon line.
As to your encouraging my travel, I've been to about 20% of all the counties in the US,
Yet you never use any interstates. Riiiigghhht...
missing them in a big area so far only in the most southern states from Alabama to Arizona
Now there's a huge part of your problem. You've missed one of the largest and best examples of everything you claim does not exist with highways. That same stretch is marked by cheap land, rural space to build highways on, cheap construction, and use of adjoining land for its commercial value.
including almost everywhere east of the Mississippi and north of a line from Miami to St. Louis.
Don't you mean northeast of a line from Miami to St. Louis? Still, if you think about it your geographic familiarity is nothing more than yankeeland plus a little of the adjoining area to the south and west of it. Just as I said, you've missed the majority of the country.
Certainly familiar enough to not have to hold the people from other parts of it in contempt like you folks seem to with all non-Texans.
We're actually a very friendly people. The only types we hold in contempt are yankees who come here and try to tell us what to do, how to do it, and why it is so horrible that we didn't do it the way they did in the first place. NOTE: Your behavior on this thread exemplifies all of those characteristics.
Posting to chat areas leaves no searchable record, but then you knew that already.
Not really. Posting some silly message to that end [regarding my involvement] would detract away from the story itself.
And, yet, thats exactly what you do some seven months later. In the headline no less, with no attribution other than yourself.
It took 7 months for Metro to sign the contract. I posted this on the day they signed it.
Why didn't you post it to the Texas chat forum where all the folks who'd care would read it? (and there'd still be a record, indicating a consistant pattern of behavior) If thats where you first posted the original find why wouldn't you return there with the update?
First you say you posted your original, original find in the Texas chat forum, which cannot be referenced today for corroboration.
Then a week or so later you posted the Houston Review story that you say you sent them in the main forum, but make no mention of your contribution
Then 7 months later you post an update to your original find but you do so in the main forum not in Texas chat. This time you do take all the credit for an original find , even though last time you didn't because it was an unnecessary distraction.
Yet you somehow fail to post anything to the Texas chat forum about the update, (not even a reference link) even though thats where you claim the people who really care about the issue would see it.
Now thats a Texas sized whopper of a story. Did I miss anything?
;-)
Now now!
That's the myopic view of a Bostonian. (When I lived there, I actually met people who looked at me like I had two heads when I suggested there really was a reason that at least once in their life they might try crossing the Connecticut River.)
I have lived in New York City (39 West 74th St. to be precise, Congress District of the Jabba the Hut). A New Yorker is at least willing to acknowledge there are a few redeeming places north of the Potomac and east of the Appalachian Front Range (the line of mountains that stretches south from in front of Dover, NJ to in front of Allentown and Harrisburg and Hagerstown. This places the edge of the known NYC universe at Harper's Ferry, beyond which the maps read "Injun Country" and "Here be Dragons" and "Watch out for the Peasants".
To a Philadelphian, the world of culture ends at the beginning of the actual mountains in the Appalachians (the area past Harrisburg, so a little beyond the NYC universe), with small advance outposts of residual civilization in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco.
Har, har!
A friend from Pittsburgh once told me about Texas. He was driving to Mexico City. He said when he hit Texarkana he had to stop and celebrate, because he'd driven half way to Mexico!
And if you have never ridden a 'smelly crowded train', I guess you never rode the NYC subway
I rode it every day for a year and have ridden off and on every year since age six. David Gunn did a magnificent job cleaning the subway up in the mid-1980's (no more graffiti, urine, or dirt, lazyass workers actually fired after personal observation by him), and Guiliani did a magnificent follow-up job cleaning up the City. You really should come see it now. Nothing like when it was Lindsay Beame's liberal kook land. All brand new subway cars, clean stations, no grafiti, lots of cops, street's swept, perverts and criminals all locked up on Rikers where they belong. Big change. Part of why they've had 13 years of Republican Mayors now.
Stay in yankeeland and don't impose it on us.
Nobody up here is trying to impose anything on you. On the other hand, we had to suffer through years of meddling by southern Democrats up here, including one fellow from Kentucky who was hell bent on razing 10% of Washington DC to pave it over with freeways.
No one smells on any train I ride, and there are very few fat people on them either. Might be because you have to walk up and down stairs to get on them, and many people walk to and from the station. That tends to keep you fit.
We do not WANT a dense city and if you don't like that, tough for you.
I don't recall anyone on this thread threatening you with such a fate. Why are you so paranoid?
DC probably could if they did it smart and if they had invested in better highways decades ago like they should have (Case in point: I-66 is a mere two lanes in either direction from the beltway to downtown! Plus, it's the only major western route into and out of the city save the toll road).
The city was already there. Knocking down thousands of houses for a road is extremely unpopular among the voters and taxpayers. Plans by an idiot Democrat from Kentucky to do just that in Washington met with a huge uproar, as did similar plans pushed forward in every major city up here. The list of expressways proposed in our cities that were cancelled is much longer than anything ever built for this very reason.
...yet others who remember what got posted there. Some of them have already corrected your libelous allegations yet you refuse to believe them either and even persist in accusing one of being my "alter ego," also without proof or substantiation (oh, and by all means freepmail the forum administrator or whoever is in charge of that stuff and ask him to check our ISP #'s for comparison. I will venture to say that right now the two of us aren't even dialing in from the same area code or city, much less the same computer)
And, yet, thats exactly what you do some seven months later. In the headline no less, with no attribution other than yourself.
Properly designating a post that isn't from a newspaper or website is standard FR procedure, mac. I labelled it accordingly because that's what you're supposed to do just like vanities and the sort are supposed to be properly designated.
Why didn't you post it to the Texas chat forum where all the folks who'd care would read it?
Cause you can't HTML format posts there as this one required. If you notice, I pinged my Texas list in the second or third post to direct their attention to it. You'll also note that I posted a link to it on the texas forum for anybody I may have missed.
First you say you posted your original, original find in the Texas chat forum, which cannot be referenced today for corroboration.
Corroborate it with the eyewitnesses. Besides, you're the one making the allegations, meaning it's YOUR burden to "prove" that what I said was wrong. To date you have not satisfied that burden. Heck, you could even write to the Houston Review if you so desired and say "Did some freeper named GOPcapitalist email you the list of Metro contractors for your article about their donations?" If they answer you there's not a doubt in my mind that they will say "yes." Put differently, if you're gonna stalk people into the backrooms of this forum and then make harrassing allegations of dishonesty against them you should be prepared to back up what you say - so go ahead. Ask the witnesses on the Texas forum yourself. Write a letter to the newspaper yourself. I dare you to.
Yet you somehow fail to post anything to the Texas chat forum about the update, (not even a reference link)
I did indeed post such a link the other day only moments after I posted this thread.
Now that's odd. I was there in NYC last summer. I waded through trash on the streets outside of Penn Station. I used dozens of sidewalks, every one of which smelled like urine. I passed dozens of homeless people, panhandlers, and so-called street musicians, every one of whom reeked. I encountered crowds of rude yankees shuffling into and out of the mass transit, throngs of taxicabs who drive like they're in France or Beirut, groups of roving teenage hoodlums getting on the railroad at Harlem...virtually everything that NYC is notorious for. I even road on that subway train that John Rocker made famous...and yes, it was every bit as bad as he described it. From a non-New Yorker and non-yankee's perspective I noticed that sort of stuff. It stuck out. If you have become desensitized to it that's one thing and it's also probably to be expected. But beleive me - it's still there and it's still bad.
As I said, you've become desensitized to it by living there so long. When I'm in Washington I sometimes get on the Metro and during rush hour the people smell. When I was in New York I road the subway and people smelled...a lot...whether it was rush hour or not. As for fatness, I need only note that there's a fried chicken place on practically every other streetcorner in both DC and NYC with hotdog vendors in between. Their consumers evidently frequent the subways because they pack onto those trains like overweight sardines.
Might be because you have to walk up and down stairs to get on them, and many people walk to and from the station.
...yeah, with a greasy hotdog and a bucket of chicken fingers in hand. I've seen it more times than I can count. Fortunately in DC they make you put it in a bag or throw it away at the entrance, but outside? It's pervasive.
I don't recall anyone on this thread threatening you with such a fate.
You certainly haven't shied away from making ignorant assumptions about our highway system and denouncing it's alleged ill effects upon our city. Just as with highways, you say you don't hate them and perhaps you may not but it sure comes across that way in your posts!
The city was already there.
Actually, the Virginia side of the potomac was a late developer and has only really taken off in the last 20 or so years. There's also still some open space there, as the Leesburg tollroad demonstrated when it was built only 10 years ago and the Dulles tollroad before that. To this day I-66 has enough free median space along most of it to add another lane in both directions. IIRC it was kept at two by the smart growth nazis in Arlington county who hate highways almost as much as you do.
The section of I66 you were complaining about is in Arlington, an old established city. The extra median space in I66 beyond the Beltway is reserved for a future extension of the Orange Line of the Metro.
Once again, I don't "hate" highways. I find your obsession with this idea strange. I guess everyone who disagrees with you about anything is a "hater". Sounds about right, since "hate speech" is something that someone "hates" for you to say. I guess "highway hate" is thinking something about highways that someone else "hates" for you to think.
No it isn't. There's a good 20 feet of green or more on either side of the road plus a little in the middle between the road and the fence next to the railway tracks for most of the way into town from the Beltway. There are only two lanes of traffic there when room easily permits three because highway-hating smart growthers from Arlington County imposed restrictions on it during construction. I drove that route daily for over a year so I do know what I'm talking about. Nor is Arlington an "old, established city." Alexandria is an old established city and it is substantially south of I-66. Arlington was largely suburban as recent as 20 years ago. In the time since then huge sections of it have been almost entirely uprooted to make way for huge office buildings, highrises, condos and the sort.
Once again, I don't "hate" highways.
And once again, you may not but it certainly comes across that way. It's also extremely bizarre that you showed up on a thread about corrupt Metrorail contracts within moments of it being posted yet some 200 posts later you have commented on virtually nothing but highways.
Philly is not for the faint of heart. A couple of years ago, we went looking in Philadelphia for an ancestor's grave from the 1600s. I left my wife behind locked doors in the car while I stumbled around in an old graveyard that was completely out of sight from the street. After ten minutes of searching, I got nervous about noises coming from the adjacent tenements. I realized I was completely isolated and vulnerable in a bad part of town. I went back to the car, much to my wife's relief. Never found the grave. Not planning to go back to look for it either.
That's not to say there aren't dangerous places in Houston too, but I don't particularly want to ride a train that stops in them. I feel much safer in my own car.
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