President Bush, in a speech from the Oval Office Sunday night, told us we are winning the war. Click here for details on the speech.
None of us are getting any younger, I'll admit. The President has been relentlesly hammered by the public, Democrats, Allies, and Press for a long time now and seems to have aged ten years overnight. We've seen this happen often before. It happens to every President, except maybe Gerald Ford, who didn't seem to age a day in his short term in office. And, of course, William Henry Harrison, who only lasted a month in office.
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Footloose. Even more disturbing than the safety of the subways in 1980 was the infrequency with which they ran once the sun fell. I remember many nights darkened with boucheron returning from W84th when I would sense through the sidewalk grates the vibration of a downtown B'way local. I bolted cuz if I missed it my journey to east 10th could be as much 90 minutes door to door. The very best you could hope for was 60 minutes if you could make an immediate connection, very unlikely, with the "Double R" at Times Square. Today that trip would almost always take less than a relaxed 40 minutes.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, today the traffic seems to be flowing w/o too much trouble at least outside my window at 59th & Lex. My commute actually got shorter. Usually I take two city buses (30-40 minutes) and read the paper. My walk was just over 20 minutes. It's a total hassle for folks in the other boros though. Jersey, LIRR & Metro North commuters have it much easier than folks in brklyn, bx, si & qns. Those folks are stuck.
As for the strike. I think the TWU and NY will be losers here. I don't see how the union achieves anything near their demands in a world of failing pension plans and increased longevity (AARP, oooh excuse, me). I think the TWU opened with 8%v annual increases and when's the last time you heard of increases like that. The word is that the average TWU bus driver makes $60K with OT. Better than the citywide average in the private sector. Sorry if most of this post appears already. I thought I passed the security test.