Donald Rumsfeld Tries to Ride the Bus

[dynasaw]

"There once was a time when former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was considered a visionary. . . The trouble is that Rumsfeld, among other things, is a fraud who doesn’t actually understand the first thing about technology, preferring to fetishize the idea of technology. Case in point: Rumsfeld was apparently confounded by a public bus.

Here in DC, we have a rechargeable plastic farecard for the Metro system’s bus and subway lines. It’s called a SmarTrip. You wave it over a fare reader; it deducts the appropriate amount for your trip; and you go about your travel. This was a concept lost on the former defense secretary . . . Last Thursday Rumsfeld apparently didn’t do such a great job of catching the No. 42 bus at Dupont Circle."

http://www.progressivenewsdaily.com/?p=3366

Appears Republicans are generally technologically challenged: Papa Bush who didn't know how supermarket scanners worked. McCain who couldn't use email and now it appears the great Rum is clueless when it comes to the mundane business of riding a bus????

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

1. Why would he even be riding a bus? I can't begin to visualize Rumsfeld on a bus. nt

[lunatica]

2. But he's been using a crystal ball and magic wand for years!

He even knows all those unknown unknowns and the unknowable unknowns. He has visions about them. He KNOWS, fer cryin out loud!

How unfair to make fun of him when he's always had underlings to do that sorta stuff.

[NOW tense]

3. "I'm not into this detail stuff. I'm more concepty."

"I don't do quagmires."

"I don't do diplomacy."

"I don't do foreign policy."

"I don't do predictions."

"I don't do numbers."

"I don't do book reviews."

and now

"I don't do buses."

[Stevenmarc]

4. It's a miracle ....he can walk again

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Hmm - actual story: bus was too full to take extra passengers

Rumsfeld "stood alone" at the 42 Metrobus bus stop just north of Dupont Circle last Thursday, when icy traffic made the roads a nightmare for drivers, Roll Call's (paid-restricted) Emily Heil and Elizabeth Brotherton reported Monday.

With his SmarTrip card in hand -- the DC metro's rechargeable fare card -- Rumsfeld "stood quietly" waiting for the bus.

“It was almost like the guy at the first day of work,” Heil and Brotherton's source remarked. “He was looking at the card, thinking, ‘How does this work?’”

The bus eventually came but "was too packed to pick up any more passengers," the reporters wrote.

Rumsfeld apparently gave up, walking away down the hill.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Fall_from_power_Rumsfeld_relegated_to_0202.html

So, really, we have a bit of mind-reading of someone waiting at a bus stop. Shame though it is to defend Rumsfeld, these people haven't the fuck of an idea of what he was thinking. It may have well as been "how can we implant microchips with these powers into babies so that we can track them forever?"