Thursday, February 14, 2013

Obama's Mis-Direct

From an interview with U.S. President Obama
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/ready-for-the-fight-rolling-stone-interview-with-barack-obama-20120425?print=true
[excerpt] Is there any way to break through that obstructionism by Republicans?


My hope is that if the American people send a message to them that's consistent with the fact that Congress is polling at 13 percent right now, and they suffer some losses in this next election, that there's going to be some self-reflection going on – that it might break the fever. They might say to themselves, "You know what, we've lost our way here. We need to refocus on trying to get things done for the American people."

Frankly, I know that there are good, decent Republicans on Capitol Hill who, in a different environment, would welcome the capacity to work with me. But right now, in an atmosphere in which folks like Rush Limbaugh and Grover Norquist are defining what it means to be a true conservative, they are lying low. My hope is that after this next election, they'll feel a little more liberated to go out and say, "Let's redirect the Republican Party back to those traditions in which a Dwight Eisenhower can build an interstate highway system."
How ironic, when neither party seems capable of completing say I-95 though Washington D.C.- allowing it to be hijacked for a typically overly simplistic and misleading 'no white mans roads through black mans homes'  even with the available existing right of ways requiring displacing but a small fraction than assumed, comparable with that deemed acceptable for the Capital Beltway widening through Alexandria, Virginia, Springfield, and in Maryland for the Inter County Connector.
What Obama says above sounds reasonable, though he needs to also apply it to the Democrats.

You'd think that the Democrats would have say defended the plan promoted by John F. Kennedy, for the B&O Route North Central Freeway.  At least protected it against such a botching with the route deviations in Brookland D.C. and especially in Takoma Park, Maryland; with a report ordered in late 1962-early 1963, yet delayed a year and half; a report that disregarded the main idea of the November 1962 report for the I-70S/I-95 North Central Freeway to hug the B&O railroad that was built a century earlier: a botching just prior to and following the assassination of November 22, 1963, to keep I-95 far away from Catholic University of America, yet lingering so long un-illuminated.

Why after all, are both parties too chickenshit to dare propose completing I-95 through Washington.  Nor the I-66 crosstown tunnel under K Street that had been promoted by opponents to the 1950s plan for an open trench freeway along Florida Avenue and U Street?