Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Of Bikes and Banks and Market Busts

Monday, April 12, 2000

The International Monetary Fund/World Bank protesters are here in Your Nation's Capital. You might say Your Nation's Capital and the demonstrators deserve one another. Here's an example.

Friday afternoon I did a brief MSNBC gig and was walking from the downtown studio back to the Mullmobile right past the IMF headquarters. There was a cop every five feet behind the barricades. I'm not overstating that - every five feet.

In that exact area, somebody drove down Pennsylvania Avenue in a dump truck and deposited over four tons of manure on the street. The person driving the truck was dressed in a cow costume.

I have been scouring the wires to see if anyone interviewed a police officer to help us understand at what point he or she might have sensed something might be amiss.
        -- Was it when they saw a dump truck driving on Pennsylvania Avenue
           on a Friday afternoon? ANY Friday afternoon?
        -- Was it when they SMELLED the truck?
        -- Was it when they saw the driver of the truck was dressed in a cow
           outfit?
        -- Was it when they saw the driver in the cow outfit get out of the truck and tip up the bed?

A group of about 40 bicyclists were roaming the protest area disrupting traffic, one of whom almost ran me down. I calmly - gently, even - might have mentioned - mumbled, really - that he looked like a freak. He stopped his bike and said he was not a freak. I looked him up and down and demurred, suggesting, there was absolutely nothing about him which did NOT meet the definition of "freak."

He explained that the bike riders wanted more resources devoted to bicycles and fewer to cars. I am not opposed to this as a general proposition, but I said to him that (a) he could take his Theodore Kaczynski crap somewhere else; (b) as he was on his 1,200 dollar bike and I was walking it was I, not he, who was practicing LLT (Lowest Level of Technology); and so, (c) he could just back off, man.

Of course had he been on a Harley instead of a Cannondale, the conversation would have gone more like this:
Him: Watch it, punk.
Me: Sorry, sir.

Newsweek and Time both had to scramble to report on Friday's Wall Street Sell-Off. Allan Sloan wrote Newsweek's cover story (at least, the web edition) including a side-bar called "The Nightmare Scenario" in which he details the worst economic results if stocks don't rebound. At the bottom of the article Sloan's e-mail address is listed as sloan@panix.com. It turns out Panix.com has nothing to do with margin calls, but is a New York-based Internet Service Provider whose name derives from combining the phrase Public Access Networks with the word, Unix.

Time's cover, according to its web page, will deal with the male hormone testosterone. One of the questions in the subhead is: "How much of a man do you want to be?" In my case, just enough to talk back to that guy on the Harley.

Jon Corzine is a candidate for U.S. Senate in New Jersey running against former Governor Jim Florio for the Democratic nomination. The Associated Press reported the other day that he will likely spend 20 million dollars of his own money on this race.

Remember all the winging-'o-hands regarding the amount of money George W's campaign had available to spend? 70 million? The end of Western civilization or darned near to it, we were told.

If Corzine were running for President and spent in each of the 50 states at the same 20 million dollar clip he would spend - ONE BILLION DOLLARS. Get me Trump on the phone! This isn't over, yet.

-- END --

Copyright © 2000 Richard A. Galen

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