It might be time to scale back on the cutsie blog-like news posts you like to make on your website.

Today in my feed reader arrived this gem:

Now just in case somebody thinks I faked that, here it is with a little bit of context in my reader:

Click Here to Embiggen.

When I clicked the link I found a post I’m sure the writer BRITTANY TROTT thought was deliciously snarky.

D.C.’s taken the prize for being #1 in murders, and more recently, #1 in cocaine use. But a new study has found that we are also tops in brain smarts — does anyone else find that a little bit contradictory? Life’s DHA Index of Brain Health just released a study that says so, so it MUST be true!

Little Miss Brittany (who almost certainly draws annoying stars and smiley faces around her name when she doodles) goes on to dish out some actual information instead of her mediocre attempt at humor, but couldn’t resist ending with:

Yep, no more murders or cocaine use for THIS city!

Now call me crazy, but a supposed news organization running down the people and the city they cover and depend on for viewers is probably not the best idea in the world.

I think I get what you are trying to do.  In fact I can almost hear the suits who came up with it.  “Well people seem to really like those blog things.  Maybe we should dress up our website more like that.”

It’s actually not a bad idea, but you screwed the pooch when you hired half-assed writers to imitate bloggers.

So, you might want to have a little training course for your web team reminding them of the do’s and don’ts.

Do be entertaining, informative, and sometimes funny.

Don’t be a douchebag.

Good talk, NBC.  Now if you will just cut loose that drooling imbecile Jim Newell, I think I could actually respect you.

Okay, Metro riders, it’s time to chill the eff out.  Riding the old 1000 series cars is bad enough for your health without everybody wigging out and getting a big dick.

Since yesterday afternoon 3 of you have been screwing around and making a bad situation worse.

Read it and weep:

Red Line trains delayed after man struck, killed

A man who was struck and killed at the Forest Glen station was on the tracks intentionally, Metro says.

The transit agency says the man was hit by an eight-car red line train shortly after 4 p.m. Metro did not have any additional information about the man.

———-

Man pushed into side of moving Metro train

Metro officials say a man was hurt when he was pushed into the side of a moving train during an altercation at the Gallery Place-Chinatown station.

Metro spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein says two men began to argue on the platform for green and yellow line trains around 6:40 a.m. Tuesday.

She says one man shoved the other into the train as it pulled into the station.

———-

Man in wheelchair falls onto track at Metro Green Line station

A man in a wheelchair fell onto the trackbed after exiting a train at Metro’s Southern Avenue station in Prince George’s County shortly before 11 a.m. Tuesday.

The man suffered head injuries, according to Metro spokesman Steven Taubenkibel, and was taken to a hospital treatment. Taubenkibel said he did not know the man’s condition.

It was unclear how the man ended up on the tracks of the Green Line station. Taubenkibel said the man may have fallen asleep after exiting the train and rolled off the platform and dropped onto the trackbed.

What the hell is going on?

Everybody just take a step back, breathe in and out real slow, and enjoy the ride (assuming John Catoe and his “safe” 1000 series cars don’t kill you).

Another day, another Metro victim.  But this is not your run of the mill Metro story.

A man in a wheelchair fell onto the trackbed after exiting a train at Metro’s Southern Avenue station in Prince George’s County shortly before 11 a.m. Tuesday.

The man suffered head injuries, according to Metro spokesman Steven Taubenkibel, and was taken to a hospital treatment. Taubenkibel said he did not know the man’s condition.

It was unclear how the man ended up on the tracks of the Green Line station. Taubenkibel said the man may have fallen asleep after exiting the train and rolled off the platform and dropped onto the trackbed.

I should add more commentary here, but I’m gonna hold off on that until we know for sure that the man actually fell asleep.

According to The Washington Post more than 500 people gathered yesterday to mourn the loss of Maj. Gen. David F. Wherley Jr. and his wife Ann in last Monday’s Metro crash.  The room was packed with politicians as well according to City Paper’s Loose Lips Daily including Eleanor Holmes Norton, Phil Mendelson, Tommy Wells, Harry Thomas Jr., Mary Cheh, and Bill Hall.

But where pray tell was Mayor Fenty?

In every single news report on the memorial service there isn’t a single quote or mention of the mayor in attendence.

I get the feeling our beloved mayor is more than happy to take front row center when the national media is watching, but decidely less than excited when it comes to low key events.

P.S. The mayor has no public events scheduled for today.  Road trip?

Somebody over at WaPo.com hit the send button a little too soon this morning.

Click Here To Embiggen

UPDATE: No shit!

Click Here to Embiggen

WaPo this morning confirms that John Catoe and Metro are determined to kill again by leaving the 1000 series of Metro cars in service.  On top of all that, the brilliant plan to move these cars to the middle of the trains will happen when ever they care to get it done.

Metro spokesman  Steven Taubenkibel says:

“It’s not like you can take the Red Line to Gallery Place and hang a right…It’s not like moving a couple of cars out of an auto dealership.”

Ohhhh poor baby.  Is your job hard?  We all feel for you.  Really we do.

———-

In other news, let’s party like it’s 1989!!!!! ( I know that was lame, but I couldn’t resist.)

WTOP and others are touting the District is on pace to have the fewest homicides since ‘89:

With 66 homicides reported by D.C. police so far this year, Washington is on pace to have the lowest yearly total for homicides since 1989.

The number is 20 percent below last year’s figure and if the homicide rate continued through December, the total for 2009 would be 134. That would be 52 fewer slayings than last year and 47 fewer than in 2007. It would be 35 fewer than in 2006.

But don’t slap on that party hat and pop open the bubbly just yet.  Criminologists say homicides often rise during the summer months.  Apparently summertime is a murderer’s busy season.  Who knew?

———-

Speaking of homicide, the mother of a cop killer later killed in his jail cell by cops Ronnie L. White is suing Prince George’s county for $150 million:

The family of accused killer Ronnie White, whose death in a Prince George’s County jail was ruled a homicide but produced no charges, is planning to sue Prince George’s County officials and correctional officers over his death.

White’s mother continues to blame the jailhouse guards. A year after her son’s death, she is filing suit for more than $150 million against Prince George’s County officials and those correctional officers who she believes killed her son.

I have personally never forgotten this story.  Say whatever the hell you want about what kind of person Ronnie White was, the fact remains nobody deserves to kill someone and get off scot-free. It’s been an effing year and even though everyone in PG knows these guards killed White no one in the prosecutors office has done a damn thing about it.

It’s a vicious circle really.  I don’t want the White family to get $150 million of the tax payer’s dollars, but at the same time I want someone who is refusing to enforce the law to pay a price.

This is the kind of bullshit we have to endure when the people are too damn busy with their own life to actually pay attention to what is going on in their government.

Somebody cue Mussolini.  ABC 7 reports this afternoon that John Catoe has rejected the proposal to remove the 1,000 series Metro cars because of the significant wait times it would cause on the Red Line.

D.C. council member and Metro Board chairman Jim Graham supposedly made the suggestion.

[Metro spokesman]Taubenkibel says Metro simply can’t afford to give up one-fourth of its fleet of cars and keep a record number of commuters on track.

“What that would mean is during rush hour, no more eight-car trains,” Taubenkibel added. “It would mean longer waits … and [strand] people at platforms.”

Let’s see…a few more minutes of waiting or the added potential of being crushed to death under 10 tons of metal?  I’ll take the wait.

This story wouldn’t be complete without this bit of Catoe logic:

Catoe has compared the 1970s-era 1000-series cars to 1970s automobiles, saying that of course modern train cars are safer than older train cars, just as modern passenger vehicles are safer than vehicles built in the 1970s. But Catoe has rejected the idea the 1000-series cars are unsafe, calling it only a passenger “perception”.

It’s not a “perception” that something made in this century is safer than something made last century, John.  It’s a fact.

But while we are talking about perceptions, it seems to me the only one you need to concern yourself with is that a lot of people (including myself) see 9 dead bodies from last week’s crash as a result of you and your staff’s incompetence.

If you don’t get your head out of your ass and start thinking realistically about the safety of the Metro passengers, I can see that perception really taking off.

Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr. was profiled in a Sunday Washington Times piece and got me a little red under the collar with a ballsy misdirection play.

But same-sex marriage, according to Mr. Jackson, is no civil right.

“How dare someone piggyback on the civil rights movement?” he said. “What you really have is an elite group of people masquerading as a minority and systematically imposing their will on the majority.”

Let’s step back a minute, Bishop.  Let’s just check the common meaning of the civil rights movement.

According to Dictionary.Com, civil rights is defined:

1. rights to personal liberty established by the 13th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and certain Congressional acts, esp. as applied to an individual or a minority group.
2. the rights to full legal, social, and economic equality extended to blacks.

So the whole civil rights movement was all about a segment of the American people (blacks) having the right to full legal, social, and economic equality, right?

So please, Bishop Jackson, explain to me how that is any different than homosexuals wanting the right to marry or to receive the same insurance coverage that their heterosexual counterparts do?  Do gays want legal equality?  Check.  Do gays want social equality?  Check.  Do gays want economic equality? Check.  Where’s the difference?

The bottom line is that you can’t explain the difference because you have no effing clue what you are talking about.

And while you are waxing poetic about the “elite group of people masquerading as a minority and systematically imposing their will on the majority”, let’s take a look at you.

I’m getting pretty damn sick and tired of an elite group of people masquerading as religious leaders and systematically imposing their will on the majority through lobbying the passage of laws that uphold their personal religious beliefs.

Call yourself “bishop”, preach in your church, feed the hungry, help the poor, but  stay the hell out of politics! If the day comes that you want to drop your tax exempt religious status and form a PAC then I will gladly welcome you to the debate.  Otherwise, shut your pie hole!

The reality, Bishop, is that you are a fraud and a liar.  You have become what your father and grandfather fought to resist.

Now that society has evolved and the laws are in place to protect you and all the other colors of the rainbow from persecution and prejudice, you want to dish out some of your own to others.

You are no different than a lobbyist that slithers the halls of Congress or the slimy politicians they control–except of course you and your church enjoy that nice fat tax exemption.

How dare they, Bishop?  No, how dare you!

The Red Line is back in service and so far that is the only change.

After all the hotair about the changes that needed to be swiftly instituted in the name of public saftey with regard to the 1000 series Metro cars absolutely nothing has changed as of this morning.

ABC 7 reports:

Observers at Metro stations will still see 1,000-series rail cars leading trains all over the system.

I get the feeling that WMATA thinks passenger safety is a Monday through Friday, 9 to 5 type thing.

Didn’t Metro know they were going to re-open the Red Line today?  So wouldn’t somebody over there in that gaggle of incompetents think it would be important to do what they can to supposedly improve the safety of the cars before re-opening it?

Oh, I know I know.  They had a tough week.  Let’s cut them some slack.  Bullshit!

How much sense does it take to say to yourself, “We totally screwed this thing up when we didn’t listen to the NTSB and get those things out of the system 2 years ago. Now we can’t afford to get rid of them which makes us look even more like incompetent assholes. We better do whatever it takes to get these adjustments made by Monday to try and cool off the shit storm. Hey, boys, get ready for some over time work!”

As usual, Jim Graham has to run his beak:

Metro board chairman Jim Graham, in response to the news that 1,000-series cars still lead many trains, said, “Any kind of hazard that’s presented to our traveling public is not acceptable to us and all of that is being figured out right now.”

Graham promises that this week a “significant number” of 1,000 series trains will be removed from service altogether.

Promises, promises, Jimmy.

While you and your obviously concerned colleagues sit around with your thumbs firmly planted in your asses, let’s hope another bunch of people don’t suddenly get dead.

“In politics, strangely enough, the best way to play your cards is to lay them face upwards on the table.”

H.G. Wells

I’m not a big fan of conspiracy theories.  Most of them are total crap. But when a politician is dragged reluctantly into preserving records for future scrutiny by concerned citizens, the press, and of course political enemies then you have to at least be concerned.

Case in point: Fenty administration routinely destroyed government e-mails

In late 2007, Mayor Adrian Fenty tried to give himself the authority to destroy electronic records every eight weeks. After hearing months of outrage from government watchdog groups and facing emergency legislation that would have forbidden the practice, Fenty announced that he was withdrawing the proposal early last year.

But the administration was destroying the records every two months until at least May 2008, Office of the Chief Technology Officer program officer Robert Mancini said in a recent affidavit obtained by The Examiner.

“Because there is no retention schedule for e-mails for the District of Columbia government and because of cost and storage considerations, it was the general practice of OCTO to retain backup tapes [of e-mails] for [a] period of 8 weeks, after which the tapes were recycled and copied over,” Mancini wrote in the June 15 affidavit.

Did you catch that political B.S.?  “because of cost and storage considerations” we got rid of the stuff after 8 weeks.

Are we really to believe that the city government actually took into consideration cost?  This from the same government who has routinely screwed program budget after program budget by spending without concern for costs.

The Examiner continues:

After The Examiner began asking questions about his affidavit, Mancini issued a statement, which he said he hoped would clear up the “confusion [that] has ensued relative to the e-mail data backup practices” of his agency. The practice of routinely erasing e-mail tapes, he said, ended in May 2008.

That’s good timing: The following month, the D.C. Council passed a law forbidding the government to destroy e-mails until Fenty came up with some kind of preservation policy. The law gave Fenty 60 days to draw up the rules. He still hasn’t submitted the rules.

So the council gave the mayor 60 days to come up with a policy and now a full year later the policy hasn’t been submitted.

It’s pretty simple, Mr. Mayor.  If you have nothing to hide then let the people know how those documents are being preserved.  Otherwise the people have no choice than to believe you don’t want them seeing what you are really up to.

Perception is reality–especially in politics.