Ever since a recent trip to Las Vegas, I noticed more and more people driving mobility scooters.   We are not talking about sexy Vespas here, hearkening back to the classic French and Italian films of the sixties, where young lovers tooled around Rome and Paris on their two cycle models.   We are not even talking about the upgrades, the current scooters serving as answers the stratospheric price of gasoline and the lack of parking in the cities.  Instead, what is under discussion are these boring little machines that look insipid when a big rear end is hanging over its seat.

I didn’t even know mobility scooters existed until several years ago when I first noticed late night cable commercials on the television.   The company that was selling these contraptions assure the prospective buyer that if the advertiser believed the person qualified for one on their health care policy and were later turned down, then the advertiser would give the customer one for free.  You can’t beat that.

The commercials which saturated the cable stations demonstrated the mobility scooters ease of use, and how easily it stored in the trunk.   The commercials showed happy old people who were otherwise unable to get around living what was described as a normal life thanks to their new set of wheels and rechargeable electricity.   Here they were shopping, riding through the park, playing with the grandchildren.   Or here they were sitting around three four of them, like geriatric bikers, chatting it up in the retirement sunshine.

Naturally, I believe these mobility scooters were for people who couldn’t walk because they were either handicapped or so ravaged by age their legs could no longer be trusted.  This in itself was a good thing, until I saw my own mother try  out the courtesy scooter  in a Trader Joe’s and nearly run over four people and a display stand of boxed cookies.  It gave me pause. During what must have seemed to the store clerks as her interminable stint around the aisles I was laughing too hard to be embarrassed.  Comedy today is wherever you can find it.

But I digress.  Since the mobility scooters first came on the scene, I have seen them everywhere.  I have seen them on Sunset Boulevard here in Los Angeles; I have seen additional courtesy mobility scooters added to the Big Box stores.   I have seen what appeared to be caravans of them in Las Vegas, parading down the sidewalks or along the thoroughfares inside the casinos.   Given the economy and a handful of other things, that has to be the perfect statement to the downside of our culture.  One of them, anyway.  We are scootering to hell in a hand basket.

What gets me is that these are not necessarily people who are unable to walk.   These are people who are either too lazy to walk or too fat to want to try.   These are people who could walk but would rather zip around on their mobility scooters.   Whether or not they actually buy them or get their health care plants to write them off is another matter.  If health care is picking these things up, then we are paying for them as well as part of our increased health care payments.

As the cost of health care goes up, fewer people can afford it.  We’re talking here about people who actually need health care.  Not just so they can get a mobility scooter and tool around without having to bother putting one foot in front of the other.   We’re talking about families who are priced out of health care payments because, among other things, the mobility scooters add to the overall costs.

But then we are a society where we believe people have the right to be lazy and indulgent.  Where they can eat what they want, drink what they want, smoke it up, and then complain to, say the airlines that the seat belt isn’t large enough to go around their bellies.

So in spite of our anger over Wall Street, the mortgage fraud schemes, banking, and whatever else is working on our nerves, some of us, don’t seem to get it.  We will run up the health care cost for no other reason than we are too lazy to walk and too indulgent to lose the weight that allows them to walk.   We can talk about our rugged individuality and all that good old American jingo, but with some of us, anyway, instead of climbing back up the mountain, we are puttering along on a scooter.

What I mean by this is that most of us having been living over our heads for years.   We all believed we deserved certainly luxuries, everything from the pricey wines to the trendy wardrobes.   Men were having their shirts custom made, and women just had to have the bag of the season.  Designer, shoes, suits, shirts, dining out,  lavish vacations, were no longer anything special but just another part of our regimen.

We made money and then we borrowed more.   We bought houses that were way over our heads, automobiles that offered status but at a very high cost.  We leased cars we couldn’t afford.   We took lavish vacations, ate out in cutsey restaurants.  We bought gourmet food and fine wine.   We were massaged on a regular basis.  We went nightclubbing and sat around over expensive vodka and a bowl of caviar, playing with our electronic gadgets.  We actually thought that none of it would end.

And then it did.   Now it’s time to tell ourselves and our families that life as we knew it has at least temporarily been put on hold.   The level of disbelief is considerable.  Husbands and wives are fighting.  The childen, spoiled from years and indulgence, simply can’t believe they have to cool it with the designer jeans and trips to the maill.   As for the gourmet foods, it’s the big box store for most of us.   Restaurants?   Yes, some of the top of the line steak joints are still doing well, as are the lower priced coffee shop.   As for that cute little storefront bistro. let’s just say it’s rare that you need reservations.

So after all those years of indulgence, the bottom has now fallen out of the economy.   It’s a bitter pill to swallow.   A sad but unique experience.   Ironic that it comes at such a price.

It is wildfire season in California.   The first typically come in early to middle autumn when the land is dry as a bone and the Santa Ana Winds blow hot air to fan the flames.   A spark here and the fire is started.  A few burning embers caught up in the winds, and the fire spreads to catastrophic proportions.    If not every year we are treated to this disaster, it is a good many years.

Later, when winter comes and the rains pour down, the burnt vegetation and barren landscape will never hold back the waters.  We will have mud slides.  More disaster.  Sliding mud, believe me, is a horrible menace.  Water running downhill can cause tremendous damage.  Think of mud as dense, heavy water, and you begin to see its capability.  I saw it one year roll through a house like a mucky wrecking ball.  Good thing my neighbors weren’t home that day.   Would have killed them, for sure.

So with the first we have the news crews.  We have the stories.  We have the macro stores, told from helicopters and from the fire lines, dealing with the overall intensity of the fires, where it is spreading, its percentage of containment, and the number of houses the first have destroyed.   We get to see the burning hillsides, the houses bursting in flames like Maison Flambe.   We see the fire fighters struggling bravely to contain and push back the surging conflagration.   Every year.

And every year we also get the micro stories.  The up close and personal stories.  We see men adn women sharing tears, sifting through the ruins of their houses, the charred remains of their personal possessions.  We see them looking for their pets, looking for what remains of family heirlooms and photos.  We hear them trying to console themselves by showing gratitude for the fact that they are still alive and all the lost were the material possessions.   We see these people go from a multi-million dollar house to a cot in a gymnasium shelter in twenty minutes time.  Fires move quickly in the mountain and canyon areas.

It is hard not to feel sorry for them.  You feel sympathetic, share at least a modicum of pain.  You put yourself in their shoes.   You wonder what it would be like.  And while I feel the sympathy and empathy for people who have been victimized by natural disasters, I also wonder what they were thinking when they decided to build their homes there.

I realize this is an age old question.  People wonder it about those who build their house to closely to a river that is prone to flood.   People wonder about trailer parks and domiciles built in the path of hurricanes and tornadoes.   Sometimes you can’t help it.  Sometimes the hurricane, fire, flood or tornado just takes a wrong turn and comes barreling down your boulevard.

But the fact remains many of these houses should never be built on hilltops, canyons and wooded areas where they are just inviting disaster to come for a visit.   We have seen this movie enough times to realize as beautiful as it is in these places, we just can’t afford to be building there.  It is stupid.  It is even more stupid when the same people build and then rebuild, after a previous disaster.

I know, you live there, you love the view,  it’s so romantic, the great whatever, but it seems like it is my tax dollars that are bailing you out.   It is me who has to smell or the charring that is exacerbated by the housing developments.  Days of foul smoke and smoky stench.  Yes, it would be there anyway, but it would never be the disaster it is if the houses weren’t part of the equation.  It would just be burning woods, canyons, the natural cycle where fires eliminate the surplus vegetation.

This is a lousy economy.  It doesn’t have to be made worse by stupid planning and development.  We do not have to build on every square inch of the natural landscape.  We don’t have to transpose the natural landscape with an ugly housing development that is destined to be destroyed by wildfires.  And in a time when neither federal government or state government has the money to maintain what mediocre civic services we already have, we really don’t need to be shelling out money via emergency funding so homeowners can indulge themselves in places they don’t belong.

I believe the first time there is a disaster, the government helps you out.  The second time, if you persist on living where you shouldn’t be building, you had better have adequate insurance or be prepared to be on your own when the disaster strikes.  Sure, the fire fighters will be noble and try to save you, your pets, and your house.   But if they can’t, then it is up to you to pick up the tab.    If you can’t pick up the tab, if insurance rates are so dear that you can’t afford homeowners’ insurance, then be prepared to suffer mightily.  Be prepared to suffer financially.  Be prepared to move elsewhere.   Instead of where you don’t belong.

I have always been suspicious of Aw Shucks, Self-Effacing people who in every obvious endeavor show nothing but ambition bordering on megalomania.   I mean, how serious can you be about the modesty thing when you want to make a few hundred million and run for President of the United States.   In John Edward’s case, we not only have all the self effacing play acting, we have it out of slick goober boy, the crusader against poverty with the $1,250 haircut.   Must cost a lot to look the part, so people will believe you are really serious about poverty.   In Edwards case, there are two Americas.  Supercuts and his $1,250 newscaster’s special.

Edwards looks bad in his jeans.  I am suspicious of guys who never look right in jeans but persist on wearing them to look hip or young or like one of the people they are trying to win over.   With more than a few,  jeans just don’t become them.  I don’t know if it’s the cut, their bellies, hips and behinds, or if the belt looks wrong with the shirt.  Something.  Always something looks askew.

The new Wranglers commercial with quarterback Brent Farve shows Brent Farve looks very natural and very cool in jeans.   Not even the super designer style, just a plain old pair of Wranglers.   Bill Clinton never looked right in jeans, but at least he had the good sense, for the most part, to wear khakis in his leisure.  The list goes on.  Now that I have called it to your attention, see who looks cool, or at least like the sold working prole in their blue jeans, and see who looks like their wives dressed them for the weekend.  It is very revealing.

But most of all, when Edwards calls for greater accountability and swears he is a man of family values, etc., and all the rest.  When asked during the debates what his faults are.  Does he answer honestly?  Does he tell the world he likes to fool around on the side and there is just something about Rielle Hunter that has so lassoed his stem cells he had a  baby with her?   Naw.   He tells during the debates that this greatest fault is his loving America too darn much.  Well golly.

Then when he is accused of the affair, he denies it.  He pulls a Larry Craig on us.   He then emerges from his inclusion goes back on the stump.   He is ready again to give his all about poverty.  He is ready to get paid for telling us that poverty, indeed, is bad for us.   He is ready to confess, I suppose, about his misdeeds and lack of judgement.   He is ready.   Are we?  Or will we just watch the the rerun on Jerry Springer?

Bus service may be halted today

By Omar Millán González

UNION-TRIBUNE

June 19, 2008

TIJUANA – Truck and bus drivers experienced a day of chaos in Tijuana yesterday, as they chased a dwindling supply of diesel fuel. Today was shaping up to be even worse.

DAVID MAUNG Pemex gas station manager Claudia Torres placed a sign yesterday to block the entrance to the diesel pumps after the Tijuana station ran out of the fuel.

For weeks, drivers from the United States have snapped up Mexican diesel, which is selling for about 50 percent less than in California.

That has resulted in a shortage of the fuel, and gas stations nearest the border crossings started halting or limiting sales last weekend.

By yesterday, diesel had started to run out at outlying stations, provoking delays or cancellations in public and private transportation. New supplies might not arrive until Monday.

Long lines of trucks and buses, their drivers desperate to buy diesel, formed at those stations still selling the fuel.

Public transportation officials announced that if they could not refuel their buses they would halt service today, a decision that affects at least 750,000 daily riders.

For the entire article go to San Diego Union.

It’s pretty amazing. Once upon a time people went south of the border to Mexico for romantic reasons. They were escaping the reach of the American law. They were getting married or getting divorced. They were young and restless, looking for a good time in the Tijuana night spots, drinking and cavorting. Looking for the fabled donkey show, or for the more romantic sort that special girl or boy who amid all the drinking still cared enough not to throw up on their sandals.

Stories abounded about kids getting a little too frisky and getting thrown into jail. Their parents or whomever who would have to shell out some cash to get them out. There were stories about the nasty stays in jail, known by most as life changing experiences. The Kingston Trio wrote a song about it, titled appropriately enough, “Tijuana Jail.” If you survived it all, and usually you did, it was a right of passage.

Then, even today there are the short hops from the California Border to Rosarito Beach and Ensenada for beer fests, partying and the occasional lobster meal. You could ride horses on the beach, cheaply. You could buy great Mexican tile by the truckload and save money on your home renovation. You could buy leather goods and switchblade knives. Cheap ones, but it was a five minute thrill to flick it open and closed a few dozen times.

Now you go south of the border to buy gasoline. More specifically, it’s diesel fuel you buy at half the price. You venture to Mexico for diesel fuel, prescription drugs and dental and medical work. It’s cheaper. There are chartered buses for the dental and medical work. For the diesel fuel, you need your car or truck.

So the lines form. Orderly lines, I’m sure. All while the Mexican drug cartels duel it out on the border town streets, killing each other in record numbers. While you buy diesel fuel.

Some world. Eh, Ese`?