Wonkette
Some math wizards down in Texas have come to an incredible conclusion: What with 6.5 million lost jobs since this Hellcession began, there’s less rush-hour traffic. HEY THAT ALMOST MAKES A CRAZY KIND OF SENSE. But the news isn’t all good.
A press release we found on the Dow Jones Newswire reports:
Still, Americans wasted 4.2 billion hours stuck in traffic during 2007 — or one full work week per person — while they needed to purchase 2.8 billion gallons of extra gas at a cost of $87.2 billion — 50% more than a decade earlier. The gallons of wasted fuel are enough to fill 370,000 18-wheeler fuel delivery trucks [lined] bumper-to-bumper from Houston to Boston to Los Angeles, the report said.
Well, we should definitely do that last thing, lining up semi-trucks bumper to bumper from Boston to L.A. It would be like “Hands Across America” or some shit, but with TRUCKS. You could have Evel Knievel just cold riding back and forth over these 18-wheelers, on a red-white-and-blue (hybrid) Harley. We could heal America, just like that! Think about it, people, just think about it.
Oh never mind, Evel Knievel is dead.
High Fuel Costs, Recession Ease Traffic Congestion — Study [Dow Jones]
You build up my hopes, just to tear them down again… Now I will long for Evel Knievel riding across tanker trucks from Boston to LA for the rest of my life. Bastard.
grendel: We could get Robbie. Would that help? He’s like a fatter, dumber, less aesthetically motivated version of his dead dad.
every dark cloud has a silver lining
Today, we are all William Foster.
Well, except me. I actually have a job. EAT IT, LOSERS.
(And my commute sure as hell hasn’t gotten any shorter.)
Now if we could only get
Isn’t his son still alive doing jumps? Ornery Knievel, was it?
Now if we could only get EVERYONE to stop working, then the roads would be wide-open for people to get to, umm… ehrr…
Yeah, Ken, those trucks would also do wonders for the traffic, too. But maybe they could dispense fuel right there on the freeway, to the stuck, idling SUV’s. You know, like those fighter jets refuel in mid-flight. Except this would be on the ground. With no one moving.
Phooey. If you lined up tanker trucks end to end in LA, nobody would know the difference, and in Boston, they’d call Homeland Security, mobilize the National Guard, and declare martial law.
magic titty:
Weasel Knievel, I think.
We don’t have rush hour here in Tucson. We just have olds driving on the wrong side of the road as they go to pick up their Social Security checks (since they don’t understand direct deposit). We don’t have lines at the ATMs either.
Then it’s a good thing that as part of the recovery thingy we’re building more roads.
“lining up semi-trucks bumper to bumper from Boston to L.A.”
‘Dumps across America!!!’ Also.
I, for one, eagerly await the eventual American hellscape reminiscent of Conrad McCormick’s The Road. That novel was a fucking wet dream - from a traffic and/or congestion perspective.
I am hoping Ken, in your glorious vision, that all those TRUCKS have NUTZ.
That’s so (obscene gerund deleted) stupid those Texas math wizards should be doing policy for Sarah Palin.
Jukesgrrl: Old-age pensions are SOCIALIST!!1! Senior citizens - Save American - don’t surrender to that Fascist Marxist Nobama - BURN YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY CHECKS!!!
user-of-owls: 1/31/07 Nevar Forget!
Bearbloke:
…the bars
der
and back from. safely.
HEY! The recession will stop drunk driving accidents… or at least make them more fun.
And here I thought traffic was better, because school was out.
Traffic was eerily unshitty on July Fourth Weekend in Los Angeles. I really couldn’t make sense of it. How can people go out of town if they’re poor? How can they blow off their hands with illegal fireworks in their backyard if their home is foreclosed and overrun with bobcats? Are they just huddled under a bridge grilling rats over a tire fire? Yet the parking garage at any mall in LA is still a horrific clusterfuck. Make sense of that, science!
It’s very sad that this blog has just descended into 24/7 Denby-baiting with the Knievel reference today.
Republicans would want to make sure they were some Mexican truckers in there, because why not fuck the Teamsters?
OH, NO. The internets is incredibly slow and my wonkette wouldn’t load over on the Inhofe thread where I was going to say that he also claimed Global Warming was a Weather Channel Plot.
But a bigger fear: Has Kim John Eel and his army of evil ‘Botborgs plugged the wonkette web tubes, like they did the Pentagon’s? Is nowhere safe ?
What is Super Dave Osborne doing? Please don’t tell he’s dead.
This is proof, proof! I say, that NObama derailed the economy just to save the environment, which doesn’t need saving because our economy was so strong.
wanna save the economy? WORK LESS SLEEP MORE
Today, we are all BJ’s best friend Bear.
Oh, Jim, you bastard. You have me laughing too hard at the hands across America paragraph. I hope Sen Inhofe doesn’t read wonkette, or he’ll have his staff start organizing it.
That report notes that DC area traffic GOT WORSE. We are still second to LA.
“Although traffic has lightened up a tad in almost every other major metropolitan area in the nation, the misery index in the Washington area has increased, according to the annual national traffic study released today by the Texas Transportation Institute.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/07/AR2009070703130.html
Oh, shit. Now I’m totally banned. It was Ken who had me laughing, not Jim. I wish I had a job, so I could get stuck in traffic and forget about it.
Maybe that’s why Sarah Palin quit. She didn’t like to share her icy roads with all those truckers.
Yeah. I watch Discovery channel.
Monsieur Grumpe: Hale and hearty at 66. He’s tan, rested, and ready.
Give the unemployed the carbon credits they earned by not have earned income. Greedy eco nuts want to hog all the carbon credits themselves. Beware!!!!!!!!!!
them truckers is in Canada so what the fuck is cariboo barbie doin in Canada?
Monsieur Grumpe: LittlePig: Heck, he was in “Ocean’s Thirteen.”
I prefer analogies that stack pennies to the moon. This trcuk thing os just not real enough for me
If you laid a bunch of truckers end to end from Boston to LA, I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised.
How about trucknutz end to end from L.A. to Boston?
Line up all the trucks from LA to Boston. One of the trucks is stuffed with millions of dollars. All the other trucks are loaded with random things, like say manure, super bouncy balls, mousetraps, whatever. Then president Hopey goes on tha teevee and tells everyone that if you find the million dollar truck, it’s yours, go at it people!
Then, everyone, millions of people, just come pouring out their homes, many still in their pj’s, and just start tearing shit up to get that Million Dollar Truck. People shooting guns, stabbing with knives, cracking heads with canoe oars, it’s just mass carnage out there. People getting nun-chucked in the nuts, chainsawed in the chest, weed-wackered in the eye. It just gets ugly. Real ugly. By the time it’s all over and someone found the money (hooray for them!), half the country is terribly murdered in the streets, dead.
Think about it. Are you thinking? If half the country is dead, there would be “truckloads” of jobs open!
NoWireHangers: The mall provides a cool,dry and safe place, outside of the hellish ghetto, for Los Angeles’ youngish, third world population to pass the time window shopping, relatively free from infamous LAPD police harassment?
Will there be eleven long haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus?
I SAID LET THEM TRUCKERS ROLL, 10-4!
tehbenton: But at least you don’t have Bobby Duvall trying to chase you down.
The gallons of wasted fuel are enough to fill 370,000 18-wheeler fuel delivery trucks [lined] bumper-to-bumper from Houston to Boston to Los Angeles, the report said.
And Lynne Cheney finds it “troubling” that Barack Obama will not address Muslims by saying “America is the greatest country in the world.”
We should all just stay home and make money on teh Intarwebs. Pr0n and data entry and hax0ring, obvs.