Dave Thune Now Serving Cake

The bridge fell down. That's going to be news around here for a while. Everyone in the region will be effected, whether they know someone invovled, or will work to pluck debris out of the river, or merely have to find a new way to get to work.

Enter Dave Thune; a man whose value away from the teat of government have always eluded me:

A St. Paul City Council member vowed Friday to seek a legal detour for any plan to temporarily open a stretch of Interstate 35E south of downtown St. Paul to heavy trucks. "We would absolutely be opposed to it, and we'd take it to court," said Dave Thune, a council member from Ward 2.

Truckers say opening the stretch would ease congestion created by the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis. Gov. Tim Pawlenty's office has asked the Minnesota Department of Transportation to look into it.

One of two things going on here: Either Thune is so enamoured with the gross embarrassment that is the I-35E Parkway (the Practice Freeway), or he is acting as the trained monkey of oh-so-progressive intelligentsia that is the Summit Hill Association and the otherwise well-padded residents that coddled part of St. Paul.

Whichever it is, what Thune is doing is more than being uneighborly, it's downright creepy. By telling the rest of the metro area to go to hell because his precious constituency would burst into tears should too big a truck come near their posh homes and private gardens, Thune has launched the first and loudest NIMBY shot proclaiming "we're too special to be part of this inconvenience." Maybe he can organize a bake sale to get cake sent to all the rest of us slobs who will make changes in our lives to accommodate this terrible tun of events.

If you live in the Second Ward, this idiot is speaking for you. Do you really want to become known as the neighborhood that is too elite to shoulder any portion of the changes all of us will be making for perhaps three years to come?

Vote this clown out, Ward 2, and get your dignity back.