Category: Current Events

Tom’s World – 07JUL2026 – Atlanta Road Rage – Part 2

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TomD

Below from Google AI in response to a search. You can see elements of prejudice in the framing of the intended traffic mitigation efforts in terms of “sprawl” and civil rights.

Did it ever come to light who was spearheadding the successful opposition by federal lawsuit to Atlanta metro traffic inittiaves circa 2002?

The prominent federal lawsuits that successfully disrupted and reshaped Atlanta metro traffic and highway initiatives circa 1999–2002 were spearheaded by a coalition of environmental and civil rights organizations, most notably led by the Sierra Club, Georgians for Transportation Alternatives (GTA), and the Southern Organizing Committee for Economic and Social Justice. [1, 2]
The primary public figures and legal minds anchoring this push included:

Context of the Legal Battle
The litigation (most notably Georgians for Transportation Alternatives v. Shackelford and Sierra Club v. Atlanta Regional Commission) alleged that Atlanta’s multi-billion dollar, highway-expanding Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) violated the federal Clean Air Act. Because metro Atlanta chronically failed to meet federal ground-level ozone and smog safety deadlines, the lawsuits successfully froze federal funding and forced a historic out-of-court settlement. [1, 2, 4]

The Outcome
Rather than stopping transit outright, the opposition successfully weaponized federal law to force a massive pivot away from sprawl. The settlement required state and regional planners to scrap dozens of major road-widening projects, reallocate roughly 40% of regional funding directly into mass transit, and heavily analyze the civil rights impact of traffic planning on low-income and minority neighborhoods. [1, 3]

Believe All Men!

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Well, it looks like Graham Platner is headed for the last roundup.

The bearded, oyster-farming, nazi-tattooed, philandering communist has now been accused of sexual assault by one of his old girlfriends.  And the Democrat party endorsements are being pulled back so fast the friction is causing them to burst into flames.  Well, I guess he finally exceeded the maximum allowable Democrat slime limit.  And it’s interesting to see how that limit has evolved over time.  At the height of the #MeToo movement, Al Franken was forced to resign a senate seat based on a photo of him joking around with a woman back when he was a comedian.  But as of 2026 the Democrat voters of Maine were cool with Platner dragging a girlfriend out of a cab and locking her in a bedroom against her will.  Now granted, she was a Republican so you could say, “She had it coming.”  But it’s good to see the Democrats are evolving their stance on “Believe all women.”  Now it’s, “Believe all Democrat women.”

I heard that if Platner agrees to drop out of the race, the Democrats have until July 13th to replace him on the November ballot with the candidate of their choice.  Of course, the voters won’t have picked this candidate but that’s no different from Kamala Harris’s selection for the 2024 Democrat presidential spot.  So there is plenty of precedent.

Now, how does this affect the race?  Well, I’m guessing that if Platner refuses to relinquish his spot on the ballot, he will lose to Susan Collins by a good margin.  But assuming that he is going to step aside, which seems very likely, what are the chances for a replacement to beat Collins?  Well, let’s assume that Janet Mills, the 78 year old Maine Governor who was running against Platner before she suspended her campaign is selected.  So she’s another old woman like Collins but she’s a Democrat.  I feel like in this anti-Trump environment in a New England state even a RINO like Collins will be unlikely to survive this election.

I’m assuming this will eliminate the last remaining Republican holdout in the New England Congressional delegation.  And that’s no surprise.  It’s a 60/40 state and in a statewide election like senatorial races there isn’t any reason to imagine a Republican winning.

So I’m guessing Susan Collins will make a last gasp effort to get Platner to stay in the race.  She should spend up to a million dollars on an ad campaign that will be based on, “Believe All Men!”  She can have Bill Clinton get up in front of the camera and tell his story about how all those women lied about him and sullied his good name.  Maybe she can even get Hillary to talk about how bimbo eruptions hounded their whole professional lives and how unfair it is that people tend to believe women when they say they’ve been harassed by such upstanding citizens like Graham Platner and Bill Clinton.  Yeah, that might work.

Papaya, Jerry, Papaya!

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Here it is the Fourth of July and Camera Girl and I are home alone with the dogs and various other captive living organisms.  The kids and the grandkids have headed for the ocean and we must fend for ourselves.  And we had a nice dinner and finished up our chores (except this one) so I said let’s watch a movie to celebrate the Fourth.  And I left the choice of movie up to her.  What would she pick?  Independence Day?  Yankee Doodle Dandy?  Ah, Wilderness?  No, her pick was inspired.

“The Hot Dog Program.”  It’s a documentary from a guy from Pittsburgh who did documentaries for PBS (boo!!!).  The show travels across the country from Coney Island in Brooklyn to Anchorage, Alaska describing the local variations in the toppings, condiments and preparations of hot dogs in various places in the United States.  And to tie it into the Fourth, the show features the Fourth of July hot dog eating contest at Coney Island.

But the real reason why this movie was a brilliant selection for the holiday is because back in 1999 when this special was made there were people in all parts of the country who were excited to describe hot dogs as the most American of American foods.  And even the foreigners who were interviewed were visibly excited about associating with the American culture that the hot dog was emblematic of.

In place as different as Chicago IL and a small town in Alabama everyone thought of their local hot dog stand or store as a touchstone to their childhood memories and local life.  It linked up with summer barbecues, baseball games and summer fun.  And everyone from lawyers in Manhattan to Hollywood actors in Los Angeles to small town policemen in Georgia were sure that they knew the best place to get a hot and a drink.  Of course, they wouldn’t agree whether that drink was papaya juice in Times Square or a Coke in a glass bottle in small-town South Carolina.  But the disagreement is the point.  It’s local flavor.

And the movie was also highly educational.  We saw the awful cut of beef that is used in their manufacture and watched as the disgusting puree that eventually becomes hot dog is shaped, cooked and shot at high speed into a storage bin.  What could be more appetizing?

But what makes this movie most enjoyable is seeing Americans from 1999 talk about an America that was still the one we all remember as kids.  A place full of happy people who can enjoy a simple thing like having a hot dog for lunch without there being any political, cultural or ethnic baggage associated with an iconic American food.  Back then no one was making the point that we should consider the taco or the egg roll (or even worse some vegan grass burger) should be the new American cuisine and we all should renounce the hot dog as anathema and bad for the planet.  And that’s probably why we both enjoyed watching this so much.  Happy Independence Day.

Tom’s World – 04JUL2026 – Atlanta Road Rage

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TomD

 

My knowledge from both a personal and professional level indicate that the Georgia DOT is well funded, efficient and competent. Lord only knows the crisis level if that were not the case. Pure traffic density is the issue.

The density problem was significantly purposefully created by supposed “environmental” groups. The effects of the rapidly developing increasing traffic density has been easily extrapolated for decades. In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s a number of projects were proposed to head it off to a significant degree. But, each project was sued into non-existence in Federal court , one by one. Every suit was brought and financed by non-regional environmental groups ultimately financed by, nobody knows. The Sierra Club was the front group for several suits. Whatever the ultimate purpose of the suits was it did not include the well being of the citizens

The biggest hit was an outer perimeter to route non-local traffic, both E-W and N-S entirely bypassing metro Atlanta. I75, I85, & I20 all intersect in the middle of Atlanta constituting a large portion of the total. But noooo. Several other major projects were killed.

You would not believe the competency the GDOT call on to plan and execute MAJOR infrastructure projects. This bunch in FDOT District 3, not so much. They make what would be a 4-5 month project in Atlanta Metro last for literally years. And in the face of rapidly increasing traffic density, the local FDOT’s traffic light timing and coordination is absurdly bad.

I was “involved” with the industry for some time and before I retired couldn’t open my mouth publically.

Picture below: Ga 400 entering Buckhead area of the city on a Sunday morning. Buckhead was the area in the news a couple of years ago that tried to secede from Atlanta due to non-protection from the APD from the hoards of inner city predators.

<a data-flickr-embed=”true” href=”https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomd77/21935250858/in/datetaken/” title=”Into the belly of the beast”><img src=”” width=”2048″ height=”1477″ alt=”Into the belly of the beast”/></a><script async src=”//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>

Blow-Up Godzilla and Highway Mayhem

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The Third of July was a busy day.  We had to get the pool vacuumed before guests arrived and then there were chores around the yard.  And then we had a good summer cookout with burgers and potato salad, corn on the cob, sausage and peppers and watermelon.  No wonder losing weight is such a slog!

And it was a good visit with reminiscences about summers up in Maine when my kids were young and other trips.  And I had an interesting conversation with Princess Sack of Potatoes.  She said something about how useful mothers were.  So, I mentioned to her what fathers were useful for.  I asked her if she ever got tired while out somewhere and her father carried her around like a sack of potatoes?  Or what exactly would happen if the car got a flat tire far away from a tow truck?  Or if suddenly traffic stopped on a crowded highway in the middle of summer and after an hour someone would have to get out and walk up the road to see how long the stoppage would be.  And this caused a yelp from Princess Sack of Potatoes’ mother.  She remembered that day very well after all these years.  And she was still upset by it, remembering how certain she had been that I would never come back alive.  We all got a big laugh out of that.

This was shortly after I had moved out of New York City but I was driving into Manhattan to attend a wedding in SoHo.  It was a science fiction themed wedding with a blow-up Godzilla in attendance.  We were on the FDR Drive when the traffic screeched to a halt and nothing happened for about forty minutes.  So, since it was very hot that day and my car’s air conditioning was non-existent, I shut off the engine and started walking between lanes of traffic to see what was going on.  And about a half mile up the road there were police, fire and emergency vehicles blocking the road in both directions.  And along with several crashed cars there was a very fancy sports car that was upside down and wrapped around a light pole and some other parts of the highway infrastructure.  The firemen were cutting away what was left of the frame to get at what was left of the driver.  It looked pretty grim.

The good news for us was that our direction on the highway would be released as soon as the ambulances got their patients stowed away and headed to the hospital.   The other side looked like it would be stuck for hours.  So, after satisfying my morbid curiosity for a few minutes I headed back to my car with the news that we would be moving in less than another half hour.  And my youngest daughter looked so relieved when I managed to return before the traffic had started to move.  She was convinced that if I hadn’t gotten back before it started to move then of necessity I would be squashed like a bug in a cartoon.

It’s funny, up until today I hadn’t thought of that day in thirty-some-odd years.  Funny what stuff just pops into your head.

Scooby Doo and the Heat Index

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I was informed by “AccuWeather” that today’s forecast high temperature would be 99 degrees Fahrenheit.  But it was further stated that it would feel like 114 degrees Fahrenheit!  Now I once spent a summer in California and we did several times reach 114 degrees.  And as far as I can remember this was nothing like that.  99 degrees at 100 percent humidity and 114 degrees with bone dry air feel nothing alike.  One is a blast furnace and the other is a steam room.  So, what is the sense of this scare temperature of 114?  The weather dweebs on my local cable provider were running in circles warning of impending climate catastrophe and exhorting me to shelter in place.  I was especially amused by New York’s Mamdani begging his citizens to protect themselves from the heat but also commanding them not to set their air conditioners below 78 degrees.  Apparently, the electrical grid in New York is experiencing brown outs and everything must be done to avoid a black out during Taylor Swift’s upcoming nuptials at Madison Square Garden.  Something tells me that the wedding party will be excused from obeying the 78-degree mandate.  Can’t have a middle aged pop diva sweating at her wedding.  Think of the poor groom!

So, I finished off the rest of the lawn this morning with my push mower and as soon as the gas tank emptied, I changed the oil on that little Briggs and Stratton powered trash mower.  This will buy me some time until the tubing for draining off the oil from my riding mower arrives from my friends at Amazon.com (tomorrow they say).  I had to suspend the mower upside down and at an angle to avoid something to do with the spark plug and I looked distinctly goofy holding it in that position.  But I only spilled a couple of drops and voila!  She sounds as good as new (sorta).

As I was watering the plants in the pool area, I saw a little frog jump in so I fished him out with the pool net and threw him into Camera Girl’s Pond.  Now this was slightly after her evening feeding frenzy so as soon as he fell in, there was a boiling, bubbling panic around him and he jumped straight out into the high grass behind the pond.  Well, he probably did the right thing.  If he wanders back into the swimming pool, he can take solace from the knowledge that being chlorinated to death is a quiet peaceful end compared to being hacked to bits by the Piranha Brothers.

Tomorrow we will have Princess Sack of Potatoes and her parents here to swim in the pool before all of the grandkids head off for a week by the seaside.  A little rest and relaxation for us is good but it will be a bit quiet without them.  This week I sat through several hours of Scooby Doo cartoons that I’ve already seen too many times and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 which I probably could have skipped too but with them there enjoying this ridiculous entertainment I kind of felt like part of the gang.  Which is pretty cool.

All in All, Very Entertaining

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Ah, July First.  The end of winter here in Dunwich and the season of heat and oppressive humidity.  Glorious!  All week the grandkids have been swimming around in the pool which mercifully opened this year without a leak in the liner.  Last year ended with two patches applied and a warning that when winter ended it might be time to replace the liner; a very expensive and difficult procedure that would tax the almost non-existent competence of our local pool professional (and I use this word extremely facetiously) to its limit and beyond.  I told Matt, the pool guy. that I would think about replacing it in September.  But I’m not sure.  I might roll the dice again in 2027.  We’ll see.

I’m off from work for the next week and a half and I’m almost as giddy as a school boy on the first day of summer.  I walked around and checked the milkweed to see if any monarch caterpillars were chewing on the leaves.  While I didn’t find any, I did see a monarch butterfly flitting around the yard and took that as a good sign.  I also haven’t seen any preying mantis egg sacs or baby mantids anywhere and am starting to believe that the mantids that I bought the last few years aren’t capable of surviving the Dunwich winter.  I’ll have to look into that.  I have seen them naturally occurring in the area but I was hoping that my seeding of the area with egg sacs would have made them more prevalent.

Camera Girl has now completely conditioned her pond fish to expect a feeding at about six in the evening after our dinner.  Tonight when she arrived at the pond the water was already in motion and when she tossed in the food pellets it reminded me of what used to happen on the old Addams Family television show when Morticia would toss a leg of lamb into the piranha tank and the fish would roil the water for a few moments and a glistening white bone would be ejected at high speed out of the tank stripped clean.  That’s kind of like what her pond looks like at feeding time.  The damn things actually make audible noise.  I wouldn’t want to be an innocent grasshopper or cricket that accidentally fell into that death trap at feeding time.  It’s slightly unnerving.

I’m currently using my push mower to cut the grass in the fields and it’s taking many hours.  I’ve been too unmotivated to change the oil on the riding mower so I’m paying for my laziness.  But I figure it’ll help me achieve my summer weight loss goal.  If nothing else I’m definitely sweating off an enormous amount of water which must be good exercise for my sweat glands.  I noticed that I was having to double cut the grass to get it right.  But then I discovered that pulling it backward over the grass did a much better job so I dragged the mower behind me backward all the time.  Of course, you can only use one arm when dragging it behind you, so I came up with a routine to alternate arms.  And that had its own subtleties.  All in all, hand mowing was very entertaining.  A good first day of summer.

Reactions

Ed Brault 

It looks like New England is getting even more heat than here in South Carolina. I do remember a few HOT summers up in Danvers, and sweltering near DC when I was in college. Here we just expect it, do the yardwork before the Sun clears the trees, and keep in the shade and A/C until dusk.
If you think your wife’s fish pond look like the Addams Family, you should see the Great Ocean Tank at the SC Aquarium. 50 species totaling 550 various sized critters from all levels of the Food Chain, roiling the waters as we toss sixty pounds of mackerel, squid, shrimp, and smelt on the surface. The sharks are polite, they know they will have a separate dining service an hour later. Our 240-pound sea turtle, on the other hand, is the Diva of the Tank, and even the feeding frenzy parts before her as she glides over for her smelt-cicles (she loves it frozen, nice and crunchy). We do NOT have divers in the water at feeding time, although we do occasionally have to go in to recover a Chum Bucket that got loose from its line.

 

TomD

So Much for My Reading of the Tea Leaves

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Well, Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch tried to help their country but Roberts, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett

couldn’t or wouldn’t see how the 14th Amendment can’t apply to the children of illegal aliens.  So, we’re stuck with deporting their parents before they can birth them.  As time goes on, I see that government is bound to disappoint because the quality of most of our politicians and the way the system has been gamed precludes good governance.

And in a lot of ways, the citizens themselves have also become degraded.  They no longer want their freedom but instead crave bread and circuses.  Mamdani and his commie allies are straight up telling the mob that they will be given all the free stuff they want in exchange for their votes.  And if the commies take over the government that will be the end of this country as a first world nation.  They’ll quickly give us Brazil.  Well, what can you do?  Our leaders have been working at this for fifty years and if the younger generation is too stupid to know what’s planned for them then that’s what we’ll get.

Alright, I’m along for the ride.  But if this is the way it goes then it’s every man for himself.  We’ll need to set up our own survival networks to make up for what the government no longer has the competence or the will to provide; policing, other safety functions, reliable infrastructure (we’re already seeing the power grid fail much more frequently than even ten years ago), education, water, safe medicines and food supply.  And all this makes sense.  I knew a fellow who was an ex-pat German living in Venezuela and his family took all the things I mentioned into account.  He went to private schools for Germans and lived in an enclave outside the more dangerous parts of the city (Caracas?) and depended on a private security firm to patrol their neighborhood and pay off the local and federal officials to avoid the worst of the crime and bureaucracy.  So, we’ll have to become like Democrats talking about “our democracy” and “diversity” but hide in our bunkers and depend on armed guards to protect us from diverse democracy in the streets.

I shouldn’t paint too grim a picture.  Forewarned is forearmed as they say.  And being able to stop hoping that somehow, we’ll get everything just right and the Left will suddenly stop trying to kill us all is actually a relief.  We’ve been dealing with all of the same disappointment and worry since Lyndon Johnson and it’s just no way to live.  Just start living with the reality we have and don’t expect anyone to save you.  The only answer is to save yourself and the people around you that mean the most to you.  Sure, we’ll keep voting and all the other rituals but the effective actions are working around the anarcho-tyranny that the Left has set up and making sure you live your best life.

BNN is the Answer to the Current Epidemic of Despair

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The Baby News Network (BNN) is a comedy channel on YouTube that features as its centerpiece Baby Trump.  And as far as I can tell it is the solution to the plague of depression that has engulfed our times.  It’s just absurdity piled on absurdity but the smile it produces is certainly real.

I noticed this about Trump back during his first campaign.  His bluster and exaggeration are hilarious and actually endear him to the voters.  I mean, it’s obvious he’s talking trash and employing P. T. Barnum tactics in almost every circumstance imaginable.  But the fact that he is doing it against the people who hate us and, in our defense, makes it enjoyable.  And the fact that we don’t hold his trash talk against him drives his opponents crazy.  I once had a leftist get exasperated when she pointed out he was exaggerating some accomplishment and I started laughing about the story.  I told her that the exaggeration was what made it fun.  She just walked away shaking her head.

And this kind of humor always appealed to me.  In fact, back during his first term I used to do some Trump humor.  But the funny thing is the reality is usually funnier than the stuff I’d make up.  So, I watch some of the BNN whenever I see something that strikes my funny bone.  Of course, it doesn’t solve any of the real problems we have fighting against the Left day in and day out.  But laughter is valuable.  Enjoying something witty is helpful.  So, I’m linking these videos to help lift the mood of the people who come here to find something interesting and hopeful.

I hope someone enjoys at least one of these.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reading the SCOTUS Tea Leaves

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Well, I believe this is the last week of the Supreme Court session.  And most of the big decisions have been handed down.  But the 600-pound gorilla in the court, birthright citizenship, is still hanging out there.  And so, I’ve been trying to decide whether leaving it for the last means it’s more likely to be overturned or confirmed.

It’s a real puzzle.  Rejecting Trump’s challenge to the birthright citizenship interpretation of the 14th amendment is the conventional reading and if the court was unwilling to buck convention, then would they leave it to the end to minimize the amount of abuse they would inevitably receive from Donald Trump?  Or does leaving it to the end signal that they are going to go out with a bang this year and save the biggest decision for last?

The pessimist in me says they’re going to deny Trump.  After all you have the three commies who will surely vote against Trump and you also have John Roberts who is a squish and almost certainly would be afraid of taking such a stance even if he were completely convinced of the logic.  So that’s 4/5 without any other waverers.  How sure am I that the other five will be unanimous for Trump’s argument?  Well, not very.

But I’ve decided to force myself to take an optimistic stance on this highly important ruling.  I’m throwing my weight behind a Trump victory.  Whenever the last day of the term is, I predict that the Supreme Court of the United States of America will vote by a 5/4 margin that children born in the United States, to non-citizens are not automatically citizens of this country.

And that decision along with the recent decision allowing Trump to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for roughly 350,000 Haitians (and about 6,000 Syrians) will allow him to accelerate his immigration policies.

TPS is a humanitarian program that allows nationals from countries facing ongoing crises (e.g., natural disasters, violence, or instability) to live and work legally in the U.S. without facing deportation while conditions in their home country remain unsafe.  And that means they never leave.

So, I’m using this earlier decision as a rationale for my mindless optimism.  The thought is, if the justices were wise enough to see the logic that allows one president to declare something an emergency and another to declare the emergency over, then they can see the logic that would make the 14th amendment a stopgap to enfranchise the children of freed slaves but not want to utilize it to allow illegal aliens to steal American citizenship for their children.

Alright, have I convinced myself?  Have I convinced you?

SURE!!!

Well, stay tuned.  The decision is in the next few days and it will tell us quite a bit about our current Supreme Court.  Who knows, maybe Hakeem Jeffries is right.  Maybe we need to increase the court to thirteen justices and flood it with wild-eyed conservatives who will do my bidding.  Or maybe we’re just entering the silly season and I need a vacation.