Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2010

And they do.  Google Books shows over a thousand hits for "heavy
rail", the first n of which appear to be making exactly this
distinction (although the second hit I get has a thrree-way split
between "heavy rail", "light rail", and "commuter rail").

The earlest I see talking about a "heavy rail transit system" in
apparently this sense is from 1975.  Before that, there's a lot of
talk about "heavy rail", but it appears to refer to the rails
themselves rather than the transportation that runs on it.

Mark Brader filted:

This your idea of a streetcar?

 http://www.ssbtr.org/assets/Phoenix%20Light%20Rail.jpg

....r

Howard Fast?  Dalton Trumbo?  Barack Obama?

There's leanings, and then there's membership in a party.  But I see
that I was wrong about former.  Fifteen years ao, Seeger said, "I
still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what
Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it.
But if by some freak of history communism had caught up with this
country, I would have been one of the first people thrown in jail."

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/22/magazine/sunday-january-22-1995-the-old-left.h
tml?n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/People/S/Seeger,%20Pete

So I restrict my "old commie" description to his age.

I don't know much about Zinn.

--
Jerry Friedman

Moe likely a McCarthy echo,

Jan

Which is presumably why their colours make up the flag.

And, since I am a religious liberal socialist, the flag represents me.

Despite our smaller size, the Australian situation is rather more
complicated. In order of size, our four biggest parties are:

 red    Labor.  Nominally left-wing, but these days the party
        is very heavily dominated by its right-wing faction, so
        its position in the political spectrum is somewhat to the
        the right of where the Country Party used to be.

 blue   Liberal. The name means "economically liberal", i.e. this
        is the major right-wing party.

 green  Greens. Similar to the environmentalist party of many other
        countries. Because of its stance on things like social
        justice and education, the Green party is widely considered
        to be a left-wing party.

 (no colour) National Party. This used to be called the Country
        Party, and it's probably fair to say that this is still the
        farmers' party. Deeply conservative: they probably still
        believe that there is a Red under every bed. The main role
        of the National Party is to form a coalition with the Liberal
        Party.

The first two of these account for 70-80% of the vote. The Nationals
used to be important when they were the Country Party, but are gradually
fading into insignificance. (Although there's been a flare-up of
relevance because a maverick in the party insists on representing his
constituents rather than the hidden power-brokers who make party
policy.) The Greens used to be insignificant, but are gradually gaining
power by filling the void left by the absence of any major left-wing party.

Beyond these, there is a huge range of minor parties. On the right wing,
one explicitly religious party, and one religious party that doesn't
admit to being religious, have one representative each in Parliament. On
the left wing, there are a couple of parties that claim to stand for
what the Labor Party used to stand for, and a few others who will
probably never gain much support. In fact, the "will never gain much
support" group covers both the far right (Nazi party, Shooters' Party),
the far left (a couple of communist parties), and pretty much everything
in between.

Not me, anyway.

(Or "Not I", as Mr Walker would doubtless insist.)

I don't "get it", but I see it in the post.  Why you would want to cut
the Conservative Reform Alliance Party is something I wouldn't
understand.  I'm a CRUD...Conservative Reform Uninformed Dummy.