Greg Sargent has a Q and A with Rep. Brady:
Brady had previously suggested that D.C. Metro’s failure might have resulted in lower turnout at the 9/12 rally. Asked to square this complaint with his vote against the stimulus, which provides millions of dollars for D.C. Metro, he insisted there’s no contradiction.
“The stimulus is supposed to be for creating jobs, for creating new lines and expanding and modernizing their existing facilities,” Brady said of the stimulus money alloted to D.C. Metro, adding that the money has “nothing to do with the day to day operations of it.”
Brady didn’t directly answer when I asked him whether it was contradictory to expect government to do more — at potentially increased taxpayer expense — to meet the needs of a protest organized around opposition to government spending.
“The question [for D.C. Metro] is, Did you prepare for this major event, and in what way?” Brady said. He acknowledged, however, that he didn’t know whether the tea party organizers reached out to D.C. Metro in advance, saying this was a “shared responsibility.”
Poor Texas.
Sly
From watching Republican lawmakers recently, I keep getting the feeling that I’m watching Bob Roberts, only it’s real and their actually bigger douchebags than Tim Robbins pretended to be 17 years ago.
calipygian
I only wish that fucker was on the Red Line train that crashed in June, partially because of lack of maintenance funding instead of the General who had just retired from the DC National Guard.
No fucking justice in this world.
Xanthippas
Sorry to be off-topic, but one of you guys might like to hit this up.
General Winfield Stuck
Wingnut for — shared blame when they go around stepping on their dicks. Or, Democrats are just as guilty for letting us do stoopid shit.
calipygian
Not only that, but only 30,000 showed up for the protest, which is a flea on Metro’s back.
If they had prepared for “two million” and nowhere near that showed up, people would have been pissed for wasting money.
And anyway, I’ll bet that motherfucker has never been at L’Enfant Plaza on a Nationals game day, when every Green LIne train is just busting full of people trying to get to the Nats game and us poor working stiffs are just praying for a Yellow Line going in the opposite direction to get us home.
Shell
I don’t quite understand his argument; why dc metro is obligated to accommodate an independent protest that decided to descend on Washington? Extra trains, extra manpower, extra tax payer money. Have they done this in the past? I was at a huge pro-choice rally in the early 90’s.. We were given info on all the ways of getting around DC. But extra trains? No, and the metro was packed. We still got around fine.
Did they do anything different for the Million Man March? I don’t believe so.
So what is this incredible sense of entitlement of the Tea-Baggers? “We’re coming to Washington to kick ass, so you better make things as easy as possible for us!”
And using the inauguration as an argument doesn’t work; because it was, the INAUGURATION!
Regular Reader
“The stimulus is supposed to be for creating jobs, for creating new lines and expanding and modernizing their existing facilities,” Brady said of the stimulus money alloted to D.C. Metro, adding that the money has “nothing to do with the day to day operations of it.”
Logic Fail.
Shawn in ShowMe
And creating passenger space out of thin air for protesters has nothing to with day to day operations either.
I thought one the major goals of protest was to be disruptive of day to day operations to attract attention. Silly me.
Tattoosydney
I haz a day off. I haz a happy. Open thred pls?
WereBear
The friggin’ assholes always want it both ways.
I’m so ticked at them over it.
No one in the history of homo sapiens has ever had it both ways.
You can’t be on Medicare and scream about socialized medicine.
You can’t be upset about the deficit without loving Clinton, who created a surplus.
You can’t get paranoid about government takeovers and not make a peep about scooping up all telephone and internet traffic.
May a rusty chainsaw descend on their nether parts if they make one more peep about how President Obama is both a s o cia lis t and a f as cist.
They have lapped parody, murdered irony, and left indignation bleeding without healthcare.
I’ve had it with them.
Annie
The GOP just wants to complain. They just want the administration to look bad. Most of those who showed up at the rally do not realize that their complaints make no sense. Have the elderly show up to the rally because they are scared that the administration will kill Medicare, all the while the GOP would love to kill Medicare. Have unemployed people show up to protest against socialism, not even realizing that Congressmen have health care, and do not care that these people need access to affordable health care, which the GOP has no commitment to providing. Pre-existing conditions — the GOP response is you are on your own.
Now, the complaint is that we did not provide them with government-sponsored transportation.
I can’t stand it anymore. The level of distortation is way out of control. Those that showed up at the rally actually rallied against their own interests!!!!!
Crashman06
Pardon me, but as an urban resident who relies on an underfunded, undermanned public transit system to get around EVERY SINGLE DAY, Rep. Brady can go back to the vast wasteland of Texas and eat a bag of dicks.
Thank you.
jl
Sargent should not waste his time with Brady. Rush Limbaugh will tear that crybaby gumint money moocher Brady a new one.
There was a superior and more respectable free market alternative available. And if any one could not afford taxi fare, then it is their fault because they are losers.
I got that straight from Rushbo’s mouth to my ears. I try to avoid hearing anything from Limbaugh’s mouth, so when I do by some mischance, I remember it.
Rush said with regard to healthcare and life in general: them thats gots, gets; them that don’t gots are don’t gets losers, and they should not crybaby over it.
El Tiburon
Poor Texas.
As a mostly proud Texan, let me say I am most proud that I live in Austin, a blue-oasis in a red-sea of turds. Molly Ivins (RIP), Willie Nelson and Jim Hightower call Austin home.
But, and this is a big but, we are making a play to be in play come 2010 and beyond for the Democrats. Texas is not too far away from being ‘in-play’.
Demo Woman
My favorite line by Brady
Brady didn’t directly answer when I asked him whether it was contradictory to expect government to do more — at potentially increased taxpayer expense — to meet the needs of a protest organized around opposition to government spending.
Annie @ 11 was right.. the teabaggers complaints make no sense.
Martin
“We adopted social!sm as the model to organize our anti-social!st protest”
Bravo!
Jon
I’m sorry if the teabaggers were amazed and appalled by the problems associated with riding the magic hole in the ground, but I guarantee you they missed out on the four most important words in the DIstrict:
STAND RIGHT, WALK LEFT.
Anybody that stands on the right side of a Metro escalator at rush hour deserves to bleed in hell and have their family ground up into meatloaf to feed the homeless.
I don’t know how it is in Dorklahoma, but here in America, transit runs on the words of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: buy the ticket, take the ride.
General Winfield Stuck
And this is there secret plan, an epic hissy fit to sew apathy over time. Or politics by Stockholm Syndrome. We are captives of the insanity, and after a while some weaker souls agree to believe it long enough to vote them into power out some deep seeded need for it to stop.
I kind of think that’s what happened in 2000 election, or at least part of it/ Bush got a lot of votes he shouldn’t have in prosperous times, at least enough to get the steal.
Just Some Fuckhead
Who could have imagined the teabaggers at the rally were so fucking stupid?
Linkmeister
@jl: Who knew Rush was a Billie Holiday fan?
God Bless the Child:
“Them thats got shall get
Them thats not shall lose
So the Bible said and it still is news
Mama may have, papa may have
But God bless the child thats got his own
Thats got his own”
Zifnab
Yesh. Tell me about it.
NickM
You think they’d be happy to take a cab: free-market and a bigger carbon footprint. Win-win.
Shell
“And this is there secret plan, an epic hissy fit to sew apathy”
Not so secret. Wasn’t there some story back a while where neo-cons were saying just that. A side benefit of their shit is making people so disgusted with the political process they drop out of any involvement.
SnarkyShark
Hey, Houston has a long history of being dicked by Tom” dancing with teh gay” Delay concerning mass transit. He made sure Houston could never move ahead into the next century and birdogged it like a pet project.
Brady needs to come ride his ass on the one piss poor train Houston has that runs to the football sports complex. If he survives that, then he can complain. Until then-
STFU
Catsy
@Jon:
These words need to be engraved in front of every escalator and set of stairs in America. I grew up in the DC area, where it was pretty much assumed on the Metro and everywhere else that that’s how you did things.
Then I moved to the Northwest, where for all of our other wonderful features of civility, we seem to be utterly bereft of people who understand the concept of “slow or stopped right, fast left” in /any/ context–including the road.
Jacob Davies
“We had to stand! And there was no meal service!”
Corner Stone
@SnarkyShark: Actually, the light rail is pretty sweet. I enjoy riding it with “those people” and there’s always a bonus chance it’ll hit a pedestrian.
Can’t beat it.
DonkeyKong
Sargent should have asked him to touch his nose, walk a straight line and count backwards.
Calouste
@WereBear:
Have you never heard of Freddy Mercury?
jwb
@El Tiburon: I don’t really see Texas in play until 2016 at the earliest—though your larger point is certainly on mark. The GOP has one heck of a demographic problem confronting them—and their behavior in the last year has made that problem much worse.
Corner Stone
@jwb: Yep, the demo nature of TX is rapidly becoming a disaster for the GOP, even as it rallies their racist, fearful base.
But, the issue really is that the TX Dem party is as corrupt as it can get. A bunch of “Good Ole Boys” using every trick in the book to maintain their power and oversight as the D party grows in strength in this large electoral college state.
They give real life meaning to the whole apocryphal story – “You’re killing the party!”
“Yes, but as it dies I will maintain power”
(I know there’s an actual story behind this but not looking it up. The D party leaders in TX are mainly corrupt and bullshit. Period)
Sanka
Stay classy, moonbats…
calipygian
Brady voted AGAINST a bill that would have given Metro desperately needed maintenance funds. Undoubtedly he voted against MANY Socialist bills that would fund public transport.
That lack of support got the recently retired commander of the DC National Guard killed.
So fuck Brady and fuck you.
Your lack of concern for us city dwellers is murdering us.
calipygian
Brady voted AGAINST a bill that would have given Metro desperately needed maintenance funds. Undoubtedly he voted against MANY S0cialist bills that would fund public transport.
That lack of support got the recently retired commander of the DC National Guard killed.
So fuck Brady and fuck you.
Your lack of concern for us city dwellers is murdering us.
ellie
What a god damned dummy.
Anne Laurie
@Xanthippas:
In other words, America was a lot better off with the Sex Addict than the ‘Dry’ Drunk.
Anne Laurie
@Shell:
Perhaps we can get the media to refer to Glenn Beck’s Temper Tantrummers as the Million Cab March.
Anne Laurie
@WereBear:
The Rethug Crybabies don’t consider themselves ‘homo sapiens’, remember?
Darwinian (Linnean, if they knew about him, which they don’t) ‘scientism’ is for us godless blue-state ee-leetist preverts, not for decent Redstaters! Jeebus will give them a way to have their cakes and eat them too also, if only they can believe strongly enough!
General Winfield Stuck
Well, maybe the Sapiens part.
kommrade reproductive vigor
They way he went on in his letter you would have thought they were trying to catch the last heli out of Saigon.
I suspect Brady went into this to do a little grandstanding for his candy assed constituents and could not have possibly foreseen that criticizing something that 1) Practically runs under his office and 2) He voted against funding, might result in people asking if he was fucking dumb or a dumb fuck.
Anyone willing to bet he didn’t vote to rename National after Reagan, thereby causing Metro to spend a shit ton of money on changing the signs?
Mike in NC
Sanka is a very good name for a teabagging asshole.
Ted
Brady is my representative, unfortunately, meaning I have no representation, just an empty shell of a guy who votes for whatever his leaders tell him to without any critical thinking.
Ocotillo
Texas may be changing demographically but the Democratic party bench is so woeful, it’s hard to imagine anything changing for another decade.
Lot of GOP tribalism with the white populace down here.
Da Bomb
Yes, please pity us fellow Texans. We live amongst a bunch of idiots.
jefft452
Shorter Brady
“The stimulus is for creating jobs, not to be waisted by paying people to build stuff”