On the rain-slick highway.

Today was…a day. A long one, with many events happening in it. It included driving through three howling thunderstorms, the kind where you put your wipers on top speed and still lose sight of the taillights in front of you between swishes. In sane parts of the world, this is when drivers slow down, because you never know where the puddle lies that will send you hydroplaning into eternity. Also, because it’s good to know where the driver ahead of you is, and when they’re disappearing in the course of a second, tops, it’s wise to slow down.

So of course Michigan’s insane motorists were blowing past me at 60-plus. Passing on the right, because it’s INTOLERABLE that this woman is driving 50 in what is, after all, just some rain.

OK, but enough of that. A north wind is blowing away the lingering heat and it might be in the 50s by morning. Scratch the early a.m. swim workout and pencil in cycling. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I was away from the net most of the day, and so I missed the Anthony Weiner dick-pic story AND the royal baby’s unveiling. Fortunately, the internet kept up. Gents, when should you send a lady a dick pic and hey, it’s a royal baby.

I long ago lost track of the national punditry about Detroit’s bankruptcy, but Jonathan Chait got off a good line in his piece. It’s the last one in this graf:

Ze’ev Chafets, a native of the Detroit suburb of Pontiac, borrowed “Devils Night” for the title of his 1991 book about the city and its political culture. He compared Detroit to a liberated colony, whose politics was defined by continued resentment of the departed white occupier. White and black politics were locked into mutually reinforcing pathologies. Whites fled the city, blamed blacks for its destruction and, in many cases, gloated in its failures. Hostility toward the white suburbs shaped Detroit’s politics, which frequently amounted to race-to-the-bottom demagogic contests to label the opposing candidate a secret tool of white interests, with the predictable result on the quality of government. The worse Detroit got, the more whites hated and feared, fueling black racial paranoia, which made the city worse still. (Some national commentators recently suggested that Mitt Romney be brought in to turn around the city, which is a bit like suggesting that Benjamin Netanyahu would make a great Prime Minister for the Palestinians — hey, he’s from around there!)

Chafets’ book is very good, and I’ve read it twice — once before we moved here and once after. Yes, he wrote a fawning bio of Rush fucking Limbaugh, but “Devil’s Night and other true tales of Detroit” is worth your time.

I have to duck out now, however, as I’m a) exhausted, on several levels; and b) out of time. Let’s try for more tomorrow.

Posted at 12:30 am in Current events, Detroit life, Same ol' same ol' |
 

58 responses to “On the rain-slick highway.”

  1. Henry "Hank" Chapin said on July 24, 2013 at 12:53 am

    Your opening line today puts me in mind of some lines from Henry Fielding’s hilarious 18th Century burlesque of “serious” blank-verse drama: “Tom Thumb, or The Tragedy of Tragedies.”

    “Today is a day indeed,
    a day we’ve never seen before,
    Oh Huncamunca, Huncamunca Oh!”

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  2. Linda said on July 24, 2013 at 6:37 am

    I have a hard time admiring Chafet’s book as you do. The narrative seems to suggest that Coleman Young and his subsequent actions were the cause of Detroit’s woes, when in fact Detroit was in decline well before that. Its population peaked in the 1950s, and went down from there, as well as the good-paying jobs and manufacturing. There’s plenty to blame in the Young administration, but that’s merely when the decline got most visible.

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  3. beb said on July 24, 2013 at 8:43 am

    Coleman Young’s comment that criminals should hit Eight Mile and keep running, while meant to say he would have no tolerance for crime, seemed more like an invitation for criminals to raid Detroit’s northern, whiter suburbs, and that poisoned the well for any kind of regional cooperation that could have helped the city. Something as simple as merging the suburban bus lines with the Detroit bus service has never happened because of this.

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  4. nancy said on July 24, 2013 at 8:46 am

    Don’t judge the book by one scrap of it. Chafets shows a true 360-degree look at the city, and spares no suburbanite, including the Papa Doc of Oakland County, L. Brooks Patterson.

    As an Israeli, he comes away from it with a certain grudging respect for the city as Black Israel, surrounded by hostile neighbors.

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  5. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 24, 2013 at 8:51 am

    Wait – someone wrote a biography of Rush Limbaugh? I can’t imagine it. Hope that up-front payment was worth immersing yourself in . . . all that.

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    • nancy said on July 24, 2013 at 8:55 am

      Yup.

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  6. Heather said on July 24, 2013 at 9:03 am

    From what I’ve heard and read, most women today under about 30 or so have received at least one dick pic, often many more. This is one of those things that makes me happy I was born when I was. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate male genitalia in the right context, but in a camera phone close-up? Ugh. Are there any women who like to receive such images, I wonder. I guess they can be a helpful preview.

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  7. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 24, 2013 at 9:06 am

    Am I the only one who didn’t know Detroit had a wicked awesome flag? And even more pertinent motto? Now there’s a civic asset worth holding onto and holding up right now . . .

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Detroit

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  8. alex said on July 24, 2013 at 9:10 am

    I’m sipping from a cup o’ joe that smells like perfume and it’s just some Folger’s crap. It’s a gorgeous almost springlike morning outside. We were spared the monsoon but seem to be benefiting from its aftermath.

    I guess everything’s a trade-off. Though I loved last year’s mosquito-free summer but mourned the loss of a shagbark hickory that was doubtless overstressed, I’m enjoying this year’s lush flowers and trees and the fact that I’ve seldom had to water anything. But the bugs are so bad I almost need a transfusion after getting from my front door to my vehicle.

    So Weiner still can’t keep it zipped? Good. I want the lezzie to win. Ever since I first saw her on Charlie Rose a couple of years ago, I’ve been a fan. I imagine Weiner sends pix of his schlong to women because it’s so much more handsome than his other head shots.

    I realize that artists don’t necessarily hold a monopoly on wisdom and their politics shouldn’t necessarily dissuade me from appreciating their work, but anyone who has the slightest reverence for el Rushbo is a certifiable lunatic and it’s enough to keep me from ever picking up Chafets’ other books, no matter how highly recommended. Talk about spoilers.

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  9. brian stouder said on July 24, 2013 at 9:28 am

    I mean, wow.

    Did you see the Mr & Mrs Weiner’s press conference? Even aside from the subject matter, it was bizarre – with a fellow randomly and repeatedly popping up, and then ducking back again, from behind a cubicle wall behind them. Surely – Mr Weiner cannot be mayor of New York, when he cannot even govern Mr Happy, right?

    Regarding the head flying monkey of the rightwing airwaves, Nate Silver once commented on how insane one would have to be, to sit in an isolated studio and talk to yourself for 3 hours every day.

    I think he was – as usual – onto something there

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  10. Mark P said on July 24, 2013 at 9:59 am

    brian, I think Rush thinks the most interesting and endlessly fascinating person he ever met is himself. It must have been sheer torture for him to talk when he temporarily lost his hearing a while back.

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  11. brian stouder said on July 24, 2013 at 10:16 am

    Yes, when his oxycontin addiction became known, and the Florida law enforcement establishment somehow didn’t see fit to imprison him.

    I suppose this actually had less to do with his skin color, and much more to do with his wealth.

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  12. Connie said on July 24, 2013 at 10:18 am

    My husband was on his bike at Kensington Metro Park for one of those cloudbursts.

    Local news and how we get it has been a hot topic lately in my part of Oakland County. Our long time weekly news paper got bought and turned into a print your press release as news advertising wreck. So today’s version has this front page headline: Ciyto Walled Lake approves budget including tenative layoffs. See it yourself at http://www.spinalcolumnonline.com/ .

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  13. mark said on July 24, 2013 at 10:19 am

    How degrading for Huma. A powerful and reportedly brilliant woman reduced to confessing that, with lots of therapy, she’s come to grips with his wandering weiner.

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  14. coozledad said on July 24, 2013 at 10:32 am

    More Republican subhumanity. What is it with cops and the hopeless derp? This idiot shot himself in the wrong part if you ask me:
    http://gawker.com/fuck-all-you-libtards-pennsylvania-police-chief-anno-893666426

    He’s also an antigovernment public sector job grifter, in the mold of Republican Ag subsidies grifters.

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  15. MarkH said on July 24, 2013 at 10:38 am

    Nance – let’s be a bit more specific:

    “…it’s INTOLERABLE that this woman is driving 50 in what is, after all, just some rain.” IN THE MIDDLE OR LEFT LANE, as evidenced by your note you were being passed on the right.

    I don’t know about where the rest of you live, but it is increasingly an epidemic out here that the multi-lane courtesy of ‘keep right, pass left’ is being kicked to the side of the road. It’s actually a law in some states, and should be in every state, for safety’s sake.

    Absolutely agree, mark. Huma gives new definition and dimension to the term ‘better half’.

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    • nancy said on July 24, 2013 at 10:52 am

      I was in the middle of a three-lane road. Truth be told, it would have been unsafe to change lanes at that point — that’s how hard it was raining. Almost white-out conditions. But I take your point. However, I’ve found that Michigan drivers are so preposterously impatient that I no longer feel obligated to follow the letter of the law. A for-instance:

      I’m cruising at, say, 75 in the middle lane, and come up on a slower-moving truck. I pull to the left to pass, and see an 85-mph motorist fast approaching in the mirror, also in the left lane. I’ve already started to overtake the truck, so I can’t switch back easily, and I’m not stomping on the gas to match the madman’s pace. Courtesy would dictate the faster motorist slow to my pace, pass the truck on the left and then, once I’ve passed, pass me. But not in Michigan. She crossed two lanes to pass the truck on the right, crossed back over to the left (ahead of me), and gave me the stinkeye in the bargain. I have one reaction to this: Fuck these idiots. I don’t cruise in the left, but I’m not worried about the clowns who drive like that.

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  16. basset said on July 24, 2013 at 10:46 am

    Meanwhile, another newspaper goes under:

    http://nashvillecitypaper.com/content/city-news/city-paper-close-aug-9

    Not as big or as widely distributed as the local Gannett franchise, but at least an alternative point of view.

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  17. brian stouder said on July 24, 2013 at 10:51 am

    Huma should take a note from Irene Jackson, on how to deal with a cad (in this case, one who is already mayor)

    http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/jul/22/mayor-filner-accused-by-woman/

    the lead:

    On Jan. 16, Mayor Bob Filner met the San Diego Port Tenants Association’s board. After less than two months as mayor, Filner was unfamiliar to this group. But they knew and trusted the staffer at the mayor’s side, his communications director, a former journalist and one-time Port of San Diego official, Irene McCormack Jackson.

    “She probably knew everyone in the room personally,” said Bill Hall, the tenant association board’s chair. “She seemed very enthusiastic in taking on this new role for Mayor Filner.”

    Enthusiasm, it seems, soon curdled into disgust. On Monday, McCormack Jackson announced her sexual harassment lawsuit against Filner, maintaining her faith in the new mayor was destroyed by repeated lewd comments and unwanted physical passes.

    “unwanted physical passes” seems to be the polite way of referring to assault.

    I suppose what happens next in the New York story will be the emergence of the people who Mr Weiner showered these images upon.

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  18. MichaelG said on July 24, 2013 at 11:06 am

    Weiner is just a pathetic weenie wagger. I sure as hell wouldn’t want him as my mayor and he sure as hell doesn’t deserve Huma Abedin.

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  19. mark said on July 24, 2013 at 11:26 am

    “the multi-lane courtesy of ‘keep right, pass left’ is being kicked to the side of the road”

    The 25 and under crowd tells me the right lane is reserved for texting while driving. Something about peripheral vision and roughly aligning the vehicle with the edge of the pavement.

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  20. brian stouder said on July 24, 2013 at 11:53 am

    basset – that was an interesting link. The San Diego publication I enjoyed the most was a free weekly, available all over the city.

    It has attitude – but not too much – and one notices that they have a lot of weekly puzzle contests (crosswords and soduko and the like); presumably this builds and holds readership.

    In between lots and lots of ads and classifieds, they had any number of genuinely interesting feature articles.

    If I lived there, I’d seek it out

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  21. Basset said on July 24, 2013 at 12:57 pm

    It’s a pretty interesting paper with some good talent… when it’s gone we’ll be down to a corporate alt-weekly and the local McPaper. Which, in its defense, also has some strong reporters in there with the Deal Chicken and the Fashion Diva.

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  22. Scout said on July 24, 2013 at 1:26 pm

    A few years ago I was driving east on I-10 toward Tempe in a fairly heavy downpour, when a Jeep driven by a young ponytailed blonde went whizzing by at about 80 mph. She was about 10 car lengths ahead of me when suddenly the Jeep went into a slo-mo spin that took her from the far left lane, across 3 more driving lanes and onto the shoulder, where she finally stopped, facing the direction she just came from. As I drove past her, she looked pretty shook up, but unhurt. She was lucky to learn hydroplaning 101 early on a Saturday morning with not much other traffic on the highway.

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  23. Deborah said on July 24, 2013 at 1:57 pm

    It’s a glorious 70 degrees in Chicago, got down to 60 last night and is supposed to be 58 tonight. I picked a good time to come back after all, didn’t seem so at first. The air is very clear and dry. Yay. I think it’s funny that the older I get the more obsessed I am with the weather. It really makes a difference to me now.

    From our building here we look down on a point of Lake Shore Drive that has a big curve, it’s amazing how many accidents there are down there when it rains, even the slightest bit.

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  24. brian stouder said on July 24, 2013 at 2:02 pm

    Deborah, it’s probably all those Hoosier out-of-towners tooling along, and gawking at all the pretty buildings!

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  25. brian stouder said on July 24, 2013 at 2:23 pm

    The San Diego weekly that appealed to me is called The San Diego Reader.

    Here’s a sample

    http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2013/jul/23/stringers-trayvon-martin-demonstration-/

    the lead:

    Members of the Westboro Baptist Church — known for picketing the funerals of American servicemen killed overseas — showed up at Comic-Con on Saturday, July 20, just as they had in 2010 to protest the event, telling attendees, “Your life is an abomination,” “Your father is the devil and my father is God,” and “There’s no guarantee you’ll make it back to your hotel room tonight.”

    Comic-Con fans rallied to send a message in return, making their own signs, including “Kneel before ZOD” and wielding signs provided by the Happy Atheist organization.

    See, now I’d specifically look for this publication, every week!

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  26. LAMary said on July 24, 2013 at 3:04 pm

    Scout, I see idjits driving 4 wheel drive vehicles in downpours here in LA. I think they believe that 4wd exempts them from the laws of physics.

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  27. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 24, 2013 at 3:07 pm

    Deal Chicken. We have it in our Gannettoid product, and I just. Don’t. Get it. (And get off my lawn.)

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  28. brian stouder said on July 24, 2013 at 3:16 pm

    So Mary – when we were descending into LAX (maybe the last minute of flight), as I looked to the left (presumably south?) I saw a flat city with a big set of hills, and then in the distance (further south?) a refinery with a towering flaring/smog-making open flame. Would those hills have been the Hollywood hills? I’m assuming the Beverly Hills would be further away from the city, but maybe I’m wrong.

    And still I say, LAX was the most interesting airport we were in, by far; the people were much more interesting looking then the folks at O’Hare or at the San Diego International Airport, and they had a very cool NBC/Universal store where I got a very nice Adam Levine/The Voice tee shirt for Shelby

    PS – and the 4WD drivers around here are especially stupid in the snow. Yes, they can go go go; but they’re still hard to stop, let alone steer

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  29. LAMary said on July 24, 2013 at 3:19 pm

    If you were looking south from LAX you were probably seeing the hills of the Palos Verdes peninsula. Beverly Hills would have been north and slightly east, Hollywood even more east.

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  30. LAMary said on July 24, 2013 at 3:22 pm

    Oh, and Beverly Hills is pretty much surrounded by the city of LA, not a distant suburb. The refineries you saw were probably in El Segundo.

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  31. Sherri said on July 24, 2013 at 3:41 pm

    We have a marvelous alt-weekly, called the enfant terrible of Seattle news just the other day by the daily Seattle Times, home of Dan Savage, The Stranger: thestranger.com. And while the Times has its quirks (a fixation on repealing the estate tax, for one), it’s family-owned, not a Gannett paper at least. I miss the Post-Intelligencer, though.

    What the heck is Deal Chicken?

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  32. alex said on July 24, 2013 at 3:42 pm

    I used to write for the Chicago Reader, which is the mother of all alt-weekly Readers. It began life on a kitchen table in 1972 and grew to be quite an impressive cash cow. The founders retired fabulously wealthy in the 1990s upon selling it to a company that doesn’t deliver a product with any of the same sort of magic. It’s still the primo rag for entertainment listings but it used to be so much more, an award-winning outlet for literary journalism of the sort that most major newspapers stopped producing a long time ago. I suspect, too, that it has lost much of its countercultural flair and unique flavor because the younger generation is, well, the younger generation. They’ve never seen good writing before.

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  33. Sherri said on July 24, 2013 at 3:58 pm

    4WD drivers everywhere don’t seem to understand that having 4WD doesn’t do much to help you stop. I drive an AWD vehicle, and I understand how easy it is to forget that when you’re having no problem driving in the snow, but the laws of physics don’t forget. 4WD isn’t going to help that much if you hit a patch of ice, either. And it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep a set of chains in your vehicle if you head into the mountains, because it’s not a magic anti-snow device.

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  34. coozledad said on July 24, 2013 at 4:09 pm

    Used to be The Spectator or the Independent They featured both Hal Crowther and Barry Yeoman. Alex’s post made me wonder if Hal is syndicated through any of the other alt weeklies. He ought to be:

    …it means nothing when 80 percent of Americans say they distrust their government. At least 80 percent have no idea what it is. The most mendacious, insidious bill of goods the apostles of profit ever sold to the gullible public was this nonsense about a sinister government encroaching on our personal freedoms—as if the U.S. government was at any time in living memory an independent entity, or anything more than what the corporate will and the corporate treasure chest allows it to be

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  35. Bob (not Greene) said on July 24, 2013 at 4:23 pm

    Alex, The Reader is owned by Wrapports, the parent company for the Sun-Times now. It used to be a must-have every Friday for the music listings, theater and movie reviews, art listings and the sections and sections of classifieds, including the very awesome personal ads. Haven’t looked at it much lately. It’s a shadow of its former self.

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  36. alex said on July 24, 2013 at 4:30 pm

    More evidence that Mitch Daniels and academia were never a good fit. Maybe we should start googling all of his writings to see what other authors they may be attributable to. Then we won’t have to suffer him running on the GOP ticket in 2016. Instead he can join fellow Hoosier Timothy Goeglein in a sinecure position at Focus on the Family and exit the public arena. Wouldn’t that be sweet.

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  37. alex said on July 24, 2013 at 4:31 pm

    Shit. Here’s the linkage: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/ex-indiana-gov-mitch-daniels-draws-charges-of?ref=fpb

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  38. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 24, 2013 at 4:35 pm

    Sherri – having thrown up a little in the back of my throat…

    http://www.dealchicken.com/licking-county-oh

    Every Gannett paper’s got their own spigot on the system.

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  39. brian stouder said on July 24, 2013 at 4:40 pm

    Well, all I can say for sure is – we spent a couple hours in Joe Friday’s town; and ‘the weather was clear’. Here was our biggest Chevy Chase/vacation moment of the trip (and there were several contenders!): On the last day of the trip, we were knocking around and went to Dog Beach, or more correctly, the beach right next to Dog Beach; there was a parking spot on the street, right next to the beach. My fine young son Grant decided to sit in the car and read his book(!), and my older brothers set off to various parts of the beach, whilst I headed straight for the water.

    And THEN….a crew of street department fellows showed up and began shoveling sand off of the (new) sidewalk at the edge of the beach. They scraped and scooped and carried on, and THEN…one of the fellows fired up a great big blower; pneumatic tires, self propelled, loud…and unleashed a genuine sand storm, all over the cute blue Nissan we had parked there, and which had its windows down.

    Waddaya gonna do, eh?

    I exited the Pacific ocean and walked across the beach to the street, and the car, and then a very nice young fellow with reflective shades and a San Diego street department polo shirt walked over and apologized for sand-blasting our car. I got to laughing, which got him laughing, and I told him “It’s rented; job security for somebody at Budget rent-a-car, I’d say”. I did ask him if they actually do that every day, and he indicated they clean the sidewalk twice a week, because otherwise all that sand raises hell on their sewer system… and then he gave me tips for the best beaches to visit, and places to eat. (I told him MXN was my fave place in SD, ahead of Dirty Dell’s downtown, even).

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  40. Dexter said on July 24, 2013 at 5:37 pm

    Ten days ago I was driving on I-65 towards the Florida Panhandle. It rained 95% of the time, and some of the time the wipers were on full-high, and parts of the entire freeway were under what I estimated to be about four inches of water, and frequently the roadway was dead-stopped and crawling. When traffic allowed, I still was able to go 79 mph most of the time, but rarely in the left lane, as that traffic was going about 85 to 90. I was surprised at the infrequency of accidents, as we only saw a half-dozen accidents. I guess the cars have improved so much it takes a true moron to be the cause of a major crack-up. I was amazed at how well my daughter’s little Nissan Sentra that she loaned us performed in horrible driving conditions at times.

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  41. Dexter said on July 24, 2013 at 5:40 pm

    There is a town called Saks, Alabama that was in the news today. Just rivers of water flowing quickly where roads used to be. The rain in the south continues.

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  42. Little Bird said on July 24, 2013 at 5:59 pm

    Deborah, I counted ten accidents one day. Most were just a car sliding into the center barrier, one required a tow truck and an ambulance. I blame video games like Grand Theft Auto (that stretch of LSD is in the game). Just because you can take that curve at 85 in the game, you get idiots who think they can do it in real life.
    I never thought I’d be that person who throws some blame at a game!

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  43. coozledad said on July 24, 2013 at 6:22 pm

    Victor Davis Marcus Aurelius Tertius Lucullus Hansen:

    It was after some first-hand episodes with young African-American males that I offered a similar lecture to my own son. The advice was born out of experience rather than subjective stereotyping. When I was a graduate student living in East Palo Alto, two adult black males once tried to break through the door of my apartment — while I was in it. On a second occasion, four black males attempted to steal my bicycle — while I was on it. Once, a tall young black male ripped a basketball from my hands and drove to the hoop, very nearly elbowing the glasses from my face in the process. I think a young black man stole my chainsaw because he would have to have been fleet of foot. National Review has had to let several fine men go because of things they said about young black men. I could cite three more examples that more or less conform to the same apprehensions once expressed by a younger Jesse Jackson. Regrettably, I expect that my son already has his own warnings prepared to pass on to his own future children.

    O.K. The bolded bit is mine. But the rest is pure Sonoma Augustus.

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  44. MichaelG said on July 24, 2013 at 6:45 pm

    I think the Weiner campaign should issue Tee-Shirts that say “GOT WEENIE?”

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  45. mark said on July 24, 2013 at 6:50 pm

    I hope the NSA recorded all the stuff put out by “Carlos Danger”.

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  46. Joe K said on July 24, 2013 at 7:30 pm

    Overnighted in Birmingham Alabama Monday night and it pored Monday afternoon, cleared up then rained overnight, cleared and when I took off we got in some huge rain just northwest of the airport. Climbed up to 21000 rain turned to snow at around 16000, by Huntsville I was on top in the blue, by Nashville it was clear.
    Pilot Joe

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  47. basset said on July 24, 2013 at 7:51 pm

    Joe, land in Nashville sometime and we’ll get lunch. Plenty of interesting places near BNA, less so around JWN and MQY… but at the latter (Smyrna, Tennessee, folks… southeastern fringes of Nashville) there really is a 727 up on blocks. It was supposed to get turned into a house or something… now it’s a fuselage with the wings, tail, and engines gone sitting on stacked railroad ties just off the airport grounds.

    Brian, the first and only time I’ve been to San Diego was on a family vacation a few years ago, Mrs. B. insisted we go to Dog Beach even before checking into our room.

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  48. Dexter said on July 24, 2013 at 8:46 pm

    basset, driving through Louisville and Nashville is no picnic for someone who hasn’t been through there (Nashville)in thirty three years. We made it thanks to the navigation system…at points the freeway signage is confusing.

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  49. Suzanne said on July 24, 2013 at 9:16 pm

    But will Mitch bear any consequences? I’d say no. A huge number of Hoosiers still think of him as the Second Coming. By the time Purdue wakes up, he’ll be long gone.

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  50. Charlotte said on July 24, 2013 at 9:40 pm

    Alex — as a Lake Forest kid yearning to escape the preppie prison, the Chicago Reader was a beacon of f*cking hope for me — like a message from some world out there that I could hope to live in someday. I loved the old Reader …

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  51. brian stouder said on July 24, 2013 at 10:09 pm

    One thing that I may be somewhat of a hypochondriac about is: I believe the air in a commercial airliner is bad.

    In the past when I’ve flown, I end up sick; and when Pam and the girls flew to Florida, she came back with a head cold… and yesterday I thought I had a major-league chest cold, which has now become a major league head cold…. and I blame United and their Airbus.

    I may be wrong, but I am convinced….and now I must go ‘blow it out’a my nose’ (as opposed to other bodily ports previously referred to)

    This could be one of Pilot Joe’s biggest selling points, as in: “Are you sick of the big commercial carriers?”

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  52. Joe K said on July 24, 2013 at 10:14 pm

    Brian,
    The air in airliners is recycled, the new 787 are suppose to be better. I mega dose on air borne before I have to get on the cattle car.
    I may use your suggestion on the slogan:)
    Pilot joe

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  53. basset said on July 24, 2013 at 11:06 pm

    Dexter, it sure is… I suspect you hit the 65/24/40 multi-connection just south of downtown, that’s probably the worst of it.

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  54. Dexter said on July 24, 2013 at 11:20 pm

    Right, basset. Signage directed me to go back west to stay on I-65, when the lady in the navigation box was screaming at me to BEAR RIGHT BEAR RIGHT, and she was right.
    On the way down somehow I disabled the navigation system (it was a borrowed car) and we relied on printed directions and maps. Hairy, but no mistakes were made.
    This was my first long car trip since 2003, but I / we used to drive all over the country. I admit I have missed the travel. Maybe the Powerball will come in for me tonight. I am tired of renting and (this time) borrowing cars because our vehicles are too old.

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  55. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 24, 2013 at 11:39 pm

    Richard Florida, no Joel Kotkin, but lots of useful insight, especially on regionalism and urban cores with special reference to Detroit — http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2013/07/dont-let-bankruptcy-fool-you-detroits-not-dead/6261/

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  56. basset said on July 25, 2013 at 7:43 am

    Dexter, if you had gone left you would have gotten back on 65 eventually, just looped around the west side of downtown rather than the east. More direct the way you went, though.

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