I had forgotten how much more an outsider Greg Ballard, the current Mayor of Indianapolis, had been while campaigning and early in his term.
Challenger Melina Kennedy has not. In a televised debate last night, she pointed out he'd even been opposed to bringing the Superbowl to Indy (oh, horrrors*) unless IMPD made a substantial increase in the number of officers.
Mayor Ballard protested he'd said no such thing.
"I can show you your press release," she snapped back. Oh, ouch!
They're still not impressing me (or other observers) much. Mr. Ballard is slightly less objectionable than Ms. Kennedy but it's the difference between cleaning a scratch with alcohol or iodine: whatever we do, it's gonna sting.
(Moment I Wanted To See: they had pre-selected questions from the public, delivered by the questioners themselves. At one point, a middle-aged man with multiple advanced degrees got up, stated his qualifications and experience and that he was out of work, then asked the Mayoral candidates what they'd do to keep him in town in his job search. Totally hoped the Mayor would look offscreen and order, "Officers, arrest that man!" ...But no, didn't happen....)
______________________________
* Would that he had remained opposed. I'm not looking forward to that mess.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
9 comments:
Melina Kennedy is just Bart Peterson in drag.
No, she's too petite for that. Possibly a bran transplant? It would be minor surgery.
No, she's too petite for that. Possibly a brain transplant? It would be minor surgery.
Brain, bran -- really the same thing for most politicians.
That would explain the politicians' tendency to spew BS; too little brain, too much bran.
Don't be worry about the Superbowl.
We already know (because we discussed it on this blog) that the Brickyard attracts more people than a Superbowl.
So unless:
1)You live near the football stadium
2)You work on gameday and the stadium lies directly athwart your usual commute route
3)You have friends and family visiting for that week who want to book a hotel/motel room
4)You plan on eating out that week at a tourist friendly restaurant
You may not even notice there's a football game going on.
Well, you will, but only because it's about the only thing the local TV stations will want to talk about.
The NFL Show hits town here every few years.
No. 2 applies to me, and just using a different route solves it.
I have had, in fact, more problems with Monday Night Football games and FSU/UM football games than I have had with Superbowls.
Also, the relatively high ticket prices and the fact that the real fans, who are coming to actually root for their team, only have a couple of weeks to actually organize the trip, cuts down on the chaos.
So you need only worry about which idiot is going to be mayor.
Speaking as a survivor of the '96 Olympics, GA DOT caused a bigger disruption in the months leading up to the games then ever did the actual festivities...
Tam, GA DOT has had years of experience in learning how to futz things up. I was going to school in Decatur when they built the subway. Before the subway--one bus direct from campus to downtown, fifteen to thirty minutes depending on traffic, get off exactly where I wanted to be, and at night you could wait for the bus at one of the safest spots in downtown, because all the pimps hung out there. After the subway opened--walk five minutes from campus to take a twenty minute bus trip to the subway, wait usually fifteen minutes for the subway, and then fifteen minutes to get off at a spot that was usually inconvenient for where I wanted to go, and waiting at night for the return trip--let's just say that I always tried to make sure someone else was with me going back to the campus at night...
GA DOT stories! Yay!
I avoided Georgia during the Olympics, but did drive through Atlanta prior, when the interstate "improvements" were... dare I say it... in progress. I particularly liked the newly constructed off ramp that terminated in mid-air.
Well... DOT apparently considered it done, since it was open. Traffic was crawling, so I had plenty of time to laugh at the poor suckers who had tried taking the ramp. They were out of their vehicles, standing at the edge, and staring down in disbelief.
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