Author: F C

Rode Through Rhode Island

Still beat after driving 600 miles to and from Rhode Island with P–. This was for a regional convention meeting at Roger Williams Law School. We actually stayed at Johnson & Wales Inn, the student run hotel just over the border somewhere near the MA and CT borders.

The drive up was miserable. It rained, and if you know anything about Interstate 95 in the Northeast, it’s a really lousy road to drive in a rainstorm. Add 4 construction sites and a really bad 5 mile stretch of grooved pavement that looked like a phonograph record and sounded like a needle scratching across it, and you have the ingredients for a bad drive. We got to the hotel at 1:30 in the morning after missing the exit and making a few bad turns.

I have to say I was disappointed at the food. The inn food (we had 2 breakfasts) were pretty good — and they pulled off an excellent Eggs Benedict. The seafood was passable — the clam boil at the school was so-so, and Friday’s fish choices were good but not anything one couldn’t get in New York.

Mansions in Newport were impressive, though. All of the monied families of the late 19th and early 20th century all had luxorious “summer cottages” (“Marble House” cost $11 million in 1928 dollars) on small plots of land (the smallest at least 3 acres).

Coming back, we hit a lot of traffic, and got back 1 hour after we were supposed to, which was bad. After returning the car, we had pretty good sushi.

By the way, the Scion xB is underrated. It looks like a milk truck, but it handles a lot better. It’s roomy on the inside, has front bucket seats that recline almost completely flat for those power naps, and the driver is about 1 foot taller than regular cars. It also gets 35 MPH. The only complaint would be that it should have a few more cup holders.

About that Speech

Normally, I try not to get too political on Triscribe. (I’ll leave the political correspondence to SSW). I would like to think of myself (and I think most Americans would) as being both conservative and progressive (the “in” version of liberal). It’s not a contradiction — it’s a reflection of how the political parties have polarized themselves in such a way that the libertarian “middle class” of political actors are shrinking and are shut out (but are now part of that coveted 4% of the electorate that are swing votes).

Bill Clinton in defending the economic “middle class” made several really good points in his Monday speech. By even the yardstick of Republican values, W really has performed poorly. Fiscal conservative? Blown away the surplus and put us back 10 years. International isolationist? We just knocked over 2 countries, and managed to annoy a dozen others. Libertarianism? How about the Patriot Act and CAPPS II? I’m not yet convinced about Kerry, but he’s better at being a Democrat than Bush is at being a Republican.