Book Quote Corner

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Veterans in the News, What Is Bernie Doing? Hillary In Trouble

There is that sly little Hillary “smirk” again! “I’m perfect, vote for me”

Now we have Mr. Trump raising $5.6 million for Veterans. But nobody is talking about adequately funding the Veteran’s Administration.

But I do not want either of them to be anywhere near the Presidency of the United States.

What does money for veterans groups got to do with the Presidency? They are just like any other civic action group. My boss is a VETERAN. He belongs to no groups, hates the veterans administration, but is a kind and giving person. He has had to fight a battle against chemical poisoning by Montsano all by himself. VA “out to lunch”.

Yes, we know the political press is tough and sometimes anti-everything. IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE.

Hillary had expected a stroll in the park to her anointment as Democratic candidate for president. But Bernie Sanders has made her life hell, forcing her to take left-leaning positions that will only make it more difficult for her to backtrack when the nomination becomes hers. He even pressured her to give his supporters a place on the 15-member panel that will draft the platform, a move that can easily saddle her with political positions around which she will have to struggle. Social justice activist Cornel West will give her a real pain.

What’s the difference? Who will even remember what the platform says? Normally, no one. But Bernie has changed the rules of the game. He and his supporters refuse to step aside, and they will use even-handedness to both Israelis and Palestinians as a new marker to define the Democratic Party. What kind of Jew does that? How can Bernie (and my own self-described anti-Zionist boss) reconcile???

Worse, Bernie and his bunch are playing the same game across the board. Either Bernie’s people get words they want in the platform, or they will use the fight to win further converts within the party and beyond.

How do Bernie and his people truly think they can undo all that? Do they expect party officials to turn their backs on all the campaign contributions, not to mention high-paying jobs as lobbyists and corporate honchos? Do those who feel the Bern really see the Democratic Party returning to the down-at-the-heel days of FDR and the New Deal?

What effing idealists! Why couldn’t they just go away? Or join the Greens? Or become independents?

In Hillary’s book, anyone who wants to get anything done has to come to grips with the reality of Big Money, as she did when she joined Walmart’s board of directors, and  as Bill did as governor of Arkansas and even more as president.

Surely Bernie can see that. Yet, even as he carries his presidential campaign all the way to the convention floor, his people are already laying the groundwork for a permanent progressive movement, hoping to use his growing popularity – and his unbelievably successful fund-raising email list – to create their own people’s agenda, expand their Berniecrat base, and elect a “Brand New Congress” for the mid-term elections in 2018. Who the hell do these people think they are? Are they trying to create a left-wing Tea Party that will purge those they see as DINOS, Democrats In Name Only?

Bernie himself is already raising money to defeat some of the party’s leading lights, people like Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, the party chairman who has done everything she could to help Hillary prevail. He’s even pushing for the party to throw Deb under the bus before the convention, which party leaders may have to do to prevent an embarrassing protest against her on national television.

MARTA could expand rail network under new Georgia law

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal yesterday signed into law a bill that allows the city of Atlanta to pursue a half-cent sales tax to expand the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority‘s (MARTA) system.

Under the law, the city this fall can hold a ballot referendum that allows residents to vote on the sales tax measure, MARTA officials said in a press release.

The tax would generate an estimated $2.5 billion over the next 40 years for rail and bus projects within Atlanta city limits. The expansion would likely include a light-rail system in Atlanta’s Beltline area, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

The new law marks a “great first step forward in delivering the kind of transit improvements that people have been telling us they’ve wanted to see for a very long time,” said MARTA General Manager and Chief Executive Officer Keith Parker.

The legislation also leaves room to negotiate with Fulton County for an additional quarter-cent sales tax for further expansion in that jurisdiction.

MARTA now will work with city officials to draft a proposed list of projects that must be approved by the Atlanta City Council.

Memorial Day 2016

Pacific Paratrooper

The Things That Make a Soldier Great The things that make a soldier great and send him out to die, To face the flaming cannon's mouth, nor ever question why, Are lilacs by a little porch, the row of tulips red, The peonies and pansies, too, the old petunia bed, The grass plot where his children play, the roses on the wall: 'Tis these that make a soldier great. He's fighting for them all. 'Tis not the pomp and pride of kings that make a soldier brave; 'Tis not allegiance to the flag that over him may wave; For soldiers never fight so well on land or on the foam As when behind the cause they see the little place called home. Endanger but that humble street whereon his children run-- You make a soldier of the man who never bore a gun. What is it through the battle smoke…

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Dave Douglas Quintet: Time Travel

Jazz You Too

Dave Douglas, trumpet player, has founded his own record label, Greenleaf Music, releasing his own recordings as well as albums by other artists in the jazz area.

He is a pioneer in new music marketing, setting new delivery methods for the jazz world and artist-run labels.

Time Travel features some of today’s brightest new stars – the quintet expresses Douglas’ independent spirit and enthusiasm, by choosing young and gifted collaborators.

Track Listing: Bridge to Nowhere; Time Travel; Law Of Historical Memory; Beware of Doug; Little Feet; Garden State; The Pigeon and the Pie.

Personnel: Dave Douglas: trumpet; Jon Irabagon: tenor saxophone; Matt Mitchell: piano; Linda Oh: bass; Rudy Royston: drums.

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East 96th Street UES Station Had 300K More Commuters in 2015, MTA Says

UPPER EAST SIDE — More people are traveling through the East 96th Street subway station than ever before, according to Metropolitan Transportation Authority data.

While other Upper East Side stations saw a slight change in commuters in 2015 compared with 2014, the 96th Street station, which only services the 6 train, saw more than a 5 percent jump in weekly ridership, the numbers show.

The station, which was the 44th busiest in the city in 2015, saw a 4.2 percent jump in annual ridership. That’s 336,525 more commuters than in 2014, the MTA says.

Weekly numbers followed — the station had roughly 28,000 riders each week or about 1,500 more than in 2014, which is a 5.8 percent jump — setting it at the 41st busiest station in the city in terms of weekly ridership.

Since 2014, the Upper East Side saw total increases in annual and weekly ridership at the 86th and 96th street stations, but slight decreases at all the others, including the Lexington Avenue/59th Street station, which is one of the busiest in the city.

Both the Lexington Avenue/59th Street and the East 86th Street stations once again were on the MTA’s “Top 10” list of busiest stations at numbers 9 and 10, respectively.

In 2015, the Lexington Avenue/59th Street station, which serves as a hub for the N, Q, R, 4, 5 and 6 trains, saw 150,000 less people than it did in 2014 for a total of 21.4 million people, the MTA says.

And the East 86th Street station saw a slight increase of about 156,000 riders from year to year, from 20.7 million to about 20.9 million.

In comparison, the busiest station was Times Square, which handles the N, Q, R, S, 1, 2, 3, 7, and A, C, and E trains, with 66.3 million commuters in 2015.

By Shaye Weaver

MBA: Master of Business Arts

Math with Bad Drawings

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Chicago South Hyperloop (No. 6 ) Now It Is Getting Clearer

We started out ahead of Hyperloop declaring the intent to build a passenger railroad from Chicago to Louisville, Kentucky. We had several intermediate stations along the way. Then along came Hyperloop. Not a railroad but a whole new concept! Things would be different! Big distances like San Francisco to Los Angeles. Freight. Why didn’t we think of that? Too used to seeing little UPS and FedEx trucks clogging highways.

Then we see this:

Hyperloop’s first priority is local runs, not Elon Musk’s S.F.-L.A. original idea

Rocketing commuters between Los Angeles and San Francisco isn’t the first run expected by top executives working on Elon Musk‘s hyperloop idea

Hyperloop One is planning to prove it can move freight first, and then people, through local tubes it hopes to build along existing routes, such as highways 101 or 280 from the South Bay to San Francisco.

“We don’t have to go 800 miles to add value with hyperloop,” Rob Lloyd, who became Hyperloop One CEO after leaving his job as Cisco Systems No. 2 executive last summer, told me in an interview for this week’s Silicon Valley Business Journal cover story.“We can go 40 miles and add a tremendous amount of value.”

Musk dreamed up hyperloop in 2012 as an alternative to the $60 billion-plus high-speed rail project that California officials approved.

“How could it be that the home of Silicon Valley and (the Jet Propulsion Laboratory) – doing incredible things like indexing all the world’s knowledge and putting rovers on Mars – would build a bullet train that is both one of the most expensive per mile and one of the slowest in the world?” he asked in a paper that elaborated on his idea the next year.

But Los Angeles-based Hyperloop One — perhaps the most advanced of the groups working to make Musk’s dream a reality — aren’t looking to compete directly with the high-speed rail proposed between the Bay Area and L.A.

“Everybody talks about L.A. to San Franscisco, but that isn’t the big story,” Joe Lonsdale, the co-founder of Palantir Technologies who is a Hyperloop One investor and its vice-chairman, told me. “That’s exciting but what is 100 times more exciting is L.A. to L.A. and S.F. to S.F., East Bay to S.F., or North Bay or South Bay to S.F. What is much more exciting is a metropolitan impact.”

Hyperloop One did its first test run on a half-mile track it built in the desert north of Las Vegas on May 11. The test involved a 10-foot sled with a propulsion motor that went on a 2-second trip at about 116 miles per hour before it hit a pile of sand to slow it back down. It didn’t have any brakes yet.

Just saw another new article:

Futuristic chinese bus concept: the elevated bus rides high above the roadway allowing traffic to pass underneath.

Well, we have the idea to run down on the Interstate 65 median strip.

We are not so far off at all.

Two competing L.A. companies are developing a “hyperloop” to move people at 750 mph in a frictionless tube. Can it really work?
At a high-tech garage in West Hollywood a computerized robotic system ‘stacks’ cars for efficient use of parking space.
In Fillmore, a 1913 steam powered locomotive is still going strong giving passengers an authentic taste of classic railroad travel.

1966 Poughkeepsie Train Wreck

I found this short video on You Tube on the train wreck on the Maybrook Line in Poughkeepsie in 1966. It is very grainy film.

http://www.youtube.com/v/QVFE–bum1A

The bigger wrecking crane (“derrick”) was the D-100 from New Haven. The smaller ones from Maybrook.

TTC to open Leslie Barns streetcar maintenance facility

The Toronto Transit Commission  officially open its Leslie Barns streetcar maintenance and storage facility.

The nearly 280,000-square-foot building features a “green” roof, a streetcar simulator training room, numerous storage tracks, a substation and a stormwater management pond. The facility has 30 streetcar service bays and will provide maintenance for TTC’s entire fleet of 204 streetcars.

The agency began operations at the new facility in November 2015.

The city, Ontario and Canadian governments funded the facility’s construction.