Sunday, January 30, 2011

Bloomberg's Bikes Are Made For Riding...Right On Over You

You keep saying you've got something for me.
something you call love, but confess.
You've been a messin' where you shouldn't have been a messin'
and now someone else is gettin' all your best.


New York's Michael Bloomberg takes a deep breath, sighs loudly, and tells angry New Yorkers, "OK, let me try explaining myself again. I'll talk even slower and use even tinier words so you middle class dolts can understand me, all right? Here goes...":

What, you don't like bike lanes? It couldn't be that they're a menace, waste millions of dollars and add to traffic congestion and more parking tickets.

No, it's just because you don't understand their virtue. That's Mayor Bloomberg's story and he's sticking to it.

After hundreds of people at a meeting booed new lanes in the Rockaways, the mayor threw the taxpayers a bone. "I don't think we've done a very good job of explaining and planning," he told the crowd. The implicit message is that he knows best, and you will agree once he explains it all. And if you don't, tough noogies. You're still getting bike lanes because he wants them.

You keep lying, when you oughta be truthin'
and you keep losin' when you oughta not bet.
You keep samin' when you oughta be a changin'.
Now what's right is right, but you ain't been right yet.

Sounds like a certain president and his beloved social programs that we're all just too f*cking stupid to appreciate, no? The pattern is a perfect match: Importing the trappings of "social democracy" into America, and when the people protest, tell them it's because they're too stupid to understand what's best for themselves - that's a job best left to the government, assuming it is run by Democrats.

Bloomberg, like Obama, has been pretty much given up on by the people he claims to govern. The city was sick of the "independent" Bloomberg by 2009, when, after
spending over $102 million dollars - an average of per $175- voter and more than 16x his Democratic opponent, he still barely won the NYC mayoral election by a tally of 50%-46%. But like Obama, who saw his party get pounded in the midterms for his policies, Bloomberg sees no need to govern in a way that reflects the will of the people. It's about his ideology, democracy be damned.

He's pretty much done as mayor of New York, and few will weep at his departure, but is this guy serious as he contemplates a 2012 presidential run, offering voters an imperious snob as a replacement for another imperious snob?

The voters have already gotten your message, Mikey, and they don't like it. But I guarantee they have a message for you - and it's already in the mail:

These boots are made for walking, and that's just what they'll do
one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.

Are you ready boots? Start walkin'!