if you don't like it, get the fuck out!

We are wealthy enough as a nation to have it all and then some.

and that's a hell of a tall order.

What good has it done us in the past several decades? We use it for offense, not defense, and it drains us so that our infrastructure crumbles, higher education is unaffordable, and people can't afford basic medical and dental care.

It's bad enough that they occasionally rub shoulders with the moneyed class on airliners.

Of course, you CAN cut down on the contact with the unwashed a little by flying First Class.

Fucking Republicans.

For the rest of my life--the rest of my fucking life, mind you--I will never again be able to hear the phrase "fucking Republicans" without thinking of your post.

I hope you're satisfied!

Seriously, that was one hilarious response.

Last edited Wed Mar 12, 2014, 06:38 AM - Edit history (1)

Bet you didn't know Fucking was a noun, didya?



If you really want to find a Fucking Republican...start in the obvious places.

John runs an ice cream shop. One day, a customer came in.

"I'd like a big bowl of chocolate ice cream, please. It's my very favorite."
'I'm sorry sir, but we're out of chocolate today. It'll be here tomorrow, though.'
The customer left.

Two hours later, the same customer came back.

"I'd like a double-scoop ice cream cone."
'Certainly sir, what flavors?'
"Oh, chocolate! It's the greatest flavor in the world."
'I'm sorry sir, but we're still out of chocolate until tomorrow.'
The customer left.

Two hours later, he came back AGAIN.

"I'd like a tasting spoon of chocolate ice cream."
'Sir, spell "straw" like in "strawberry".'
(Looking confused) "Uhh...s-t-r-a-w?"
'Now spell "van" like in "vanilla".'
(Looking even more confused) "V-a-n?"
'Now spell "fuck" like in "chocolate".'
"What the hell? There's no 'fuck' in 'chocolate'!"
'Yeah, I know. And I've told you that twice already!'

I think that whole Wikipedia article was funny, because it was meant to be taken seriously, and that's what makes it so damn funny.

I think I recognize that koban from somewhere...

Its super cool!

But I had no idea a shitstorm would ensue.

It's a shame that the country that once led the world in innovation, is lagging behind the technology race in almost every area of importance.

For most routes trains are never going to be competitive with air travel. The Northeast corridor is an exception, of course. The other thing is that in the US we cannot simply build train lines over people's property without paying fair compensation, while a dictatorship like China can do whatever it wants.

Flying sux.... big time. It didn't used to but it does now.


And there are plenty of clusters of moderate to big towns all over the place that can use high speed train connections. And if a cross country train had a car to carry your car (like a ferry) tourists would be there big time.



Geem Nye..... defeatist much? or do you work for Big Oil?

in this country when you can be there in six hours by air.


Passenger rail between two distant points with little population density in between would have to be heavily subsidized.


Regional high-speed rail in dense population areas makes sense when you can compete time-wise as well as cost-wise with air travel.

No way it would take three days with bullet trains.

Plus, the west coast could use them. I would use it rather than drive a 5.5-6 hour drive to visit my bro's family.

It may take 3 days now but a bullet train is faster....y'think?

And would you rather sleep in the airport for 24 hours or take the train to the other coast?

including tribal lands, without paying just compensation and there's plenty of routes that could be built, where jumping on a train would be less hassle than an airport and riding a train is far more pleasant than aircraft.

Is a trait to be avoided if someone official deems it in the public good?

Sadly a lot of officials still try to grab private, as well as public property for back room deals.
But we still need high speed rail for our future, change is coming.

It's how George W. Bush got rich.

If WE want to. If WE sense a way to make a whole lot of $$$ by building something across your property than WE will.

You talk about the NE corridor as being an exception. Of course, WE were able to take the properties from land-owners and tenants by some legalese (eminent domain/shmomain) and ram those steel rails right through the neighborhoods.

Betcha bottom dollar that if someone (WE) wants to build a pipeline straight through America's Heartland, WE will do so.

I thought the RRs were talking about moving N tons of freight M miles on 1 gallon of fuel. There ain't no way that you can get that 200+ passenger jet up into the air and crossing these fine USofA's without spending a whole lot more.

there are a lot of areas that could benefit from high speed rail outside of the Northeast.

You don't think HSR from Atlanta to Charlotte, Orlando and Nashville wouldn't be popular?

Or Chicago to Milwaukee, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Columbus & Detroit?

And, then you go Indy to Nashville and then you can hop down to Atlanta, and then Orlando.

How about Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio?

and then need a car when you arrive at a station. You just can't get around Atlanta and Charlotte by public transport the way you can New York City and Washington (or London and Paris, looking further afield). The Tampa to Orlando high-speed rail project which would have cost billions but fortunately was cancelled is another awful example, given the relatively short driving distance between those two cities.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_high_speed_rail

I would love it if there was a New York to Chicago bullet train with a journey time of 3 hours or so but I don't see it happening in our lifetimes, if ever.

California has more residents than Canada. Southern California, particularly, has a ton of people.

Over 10% of the nation lives in California. Better than 60% of them live in a fairly small Corridor from the Bay area down to LA.

Los Angeles County by itself is 3% of the nation, more than the entire population of New Jersey(or any of the other 39 states with a lower population)

I suspect that kind of density would easily support true high speed rail between LA and SF. Cutting a 5 hour drive to maybe a 2 hour ride. Possibly even north to Seattle.

BUT not when I am 80 years old and my mind is half gone...

But, I think they're already building high speed rail there, no?

And it was going to be semi, sorta, halfway high speed. IE stretches of high speed, stretches of upgraded regular, a hodgepodge using a lot of old rail, not a true high speed line built to be high speed from the start. That sort of thing never seems to work as well. Like running fiber to your house, then using an old router that cant handle the speed to connect it to your computers.

We need to move people faster, better and smarter, I thought we all realized that.

Basically useless, especially if it works like an airport. I can drive from my house to Atlanta in about 4 hours. If I took a train it would be
1 hr - to get to the training station, park my car, oh yeah, ill have to pay for parking when i get back - ttt=1hr
2 hrs - I like to get to the airport 2 hours before flight, probably same for train- ttt=3hr
2 hrs - 250 miles of travel at 125 mph - ttt=5hr
1 hr - What??? They put a stop in Chattanooga? Why? - ttt=6
1 hr - detrain, get my baggage, rent a vehicle, ill have to pay for that also - ttt=7 hr
1 hr - drive to where i need to be (have you actually tried to drive in Atlanta) - ttt=8
Cost to drive is a half tank of gas there and half a tank back. Cost for train is the cost of the ticket, plus parking for every day I'm gone, plus car rental for every day I'm gone, plus gas for the rental.

They may have these trains, but they don't have free speech or certainly no fourth Amendment.

America is strangling with traffic.

We can do it, if people will stop saying we can't.

etc. etc. and then linking the outer hubs of those competitive regions.

A flight of $175Mil-a-copy F-35s (once we get the bugs outta them) could lay waste to that trainyard and the bulletless bullet trains parked there! Let's not forget that!

Brothers back down to multi-millionaire status. Then we could use the proceeds from the sale of oil and lumber to fund a lot of these projects.

Are they really that better at negotiations, or were our negotiators taking orders from Cheney?

Scuba

Smart politicians -and some luck when the oil drilling started - as no one really believed it would have been much oil there in the north sea.. And maybe because we also had some of our best negotiators on the table when it was deiced to go all in... In fact, we managed to get most of the north sea for us self when it came to producing oil - because when we negotiated our way with the british - we sent our secretary of state - who was a great diplomat - but also a very hard drinker - who more or less drunk the british diplomats under the table - and as they was sobering up the next day - our secretary of state was sober and ready to negotiate, he know his way around a bottle of alcohol - of course he got everything he wanted - the opponents was more or less like fish on dry land.... In fact he could have gotten a whole better deal, if had wanted....

And it also helps, that Norway have had a rather good Statehood - where the government and parliament is strong institutions in the country - and therefore it is less easy to "negotiate" around the parliament.. And it possible helps, that most politicians that is on a national level also have been honest - hardworking people for the betterment of Norway - not for some cooperation or shady/gray groups.. Hopefully it will continue to be that.

Diclotican

Scuba

Yeah Indeed we had a pro - even though he did had a few card down his sleeves - he was known as a man who could hold his spirit - way better than most - and also never afraid of drinking the other person under the table... Well he did had an alcoholic problem - but it worked very good when the other part - in this case the British was not so good with holding their spirit... Even though British tend to hold their spirit rather well compared to many others - but hey, we do have a form of moonshine, made up of potatoes and water - who is strong - maybe not 100 proof - but rather close 95 percent alcohol.... I guess Norway had many well educated diplomats who did Norway a very good job - even under challenging times when the two fronts was dangerously near clashing with each other...

And at least under most of the cold war we had another weapon - no secretary of State was requested to be "to good" in english - mostly because we had our own priorities under the cold war - mostly been able to have a friendly frontier with the russians - who we have a border with - and who many times under the cold war - was a challenge to tip-toe around the fact that we also was a member of the NATO alliance... If our secretary of State could look the other way sometimes - when US was trying to use some muscle to make Norway do something, that was against our best interest.. It could be a challenge to be the US ambassador in Norway - to convive their frustration - if our foreign office kind of look the other way SPecially when it come to our border with Russia - who was off limits to all foreign forces - in fact the most northern part of Norway Finmark was off limits to most NATO forces, because it was a way to make sure the russians was not trying to force their way into Finmark under hostilities with the US... It was kind of a "buffer" zone between Russia and NATO forces in Norway - even though it was anying as hell for americans who would have loved to have forces right at the door step of USSR... Norway also have something we called "dobbelt-vedtaket" going back to 1949, where we clearly stated that NO forreign forces was to be stationed in Norway during peace times - and that no nuclear weapon was to be stationed on norwigian ground or territory in peace time.. And it worked well, for more than 40 years - no one got what they wanted - but Norway managed to get what they wanted - a peacefully border with USSR - and no war on our territory...

Diclotican

Scuba

Hopefully at least they can learn some from Norway - as a small country we tend to rely on stable borders - and if not exactly friendly, at least workable conditions outside our own borders...

Diclotican

How would you raise all that money? Taxes? Borrowing? Then the change of control would probably trigger lucrative golden parachutes for the executives of those companies. Who could then expect to be immediately rehired by the newly nationalized companies as the government knows nothing about running petroleum or lumber industries and would need to hire many experts to do this.

will have to be changed?
No future vision heh.

(I'm not following you around today but your points seem a convenient hook for my current vibe.)

I know that we've had some nationalized companies in the past (WW2), auto bailouts, FNMA/etc (stretching it). If the political will was there it would be possible to nationalize companies/industries.

I don't buy the rhetoric that we'd have to rehire the employees. Most of them are probably more willing to work for a boss with transparent objectives than a boss who is out to steal the assets of the company and then dump it into the bankruptcy heap.

Actually, you just gave me a great idea!

How about we set up a Bain-like entity that went around sucking the life out of companies and then leaving them for the government to pick up, pennies on the dollar? Executives wouldn't get golden parasites (bankruptcy). This entity would actually be a lending arm of some federal bank. Win-win!

and totally worker-owned endeavors. I think some things would best be structured as co-ops, others with a worker-owned model, with banks being replaced either by state ownership or credit-union structures. There would be room for private industry, but with strict limits on size.

much more efficient than the private for profit phone companies and cost much less. I just think certain things need to be owned by the people, whether it's run by a coop or the government is okay with me. It just needs to be taken from Wall Street and foreign companies especially when it comes out of the ground.

There's still a lot of that kind of thing in Wisconsin.

level.

Local electoral politics, local economic experiments, etc.

Let the oil companies own what they own. Leases are another matter.
The government is not obliged to renew them.
In cases of gross negligence It would be justified in canceling them.

What other landlord would tolerate a tenant as destructive as BP?

Most likely they would have to pay the cost of being nationalized.

Just. Like. That. 'cause Wall Street broke the world.

When we had to we rolled up a HUGE FUCKING DEFICIT for a war on false pretenses. Nobody batted an eyelash.

I've always believed, if it's a "natural resource" it belongs to the people.

and refining the crude, but what comes out of the ground is ours.

The government can't just take property. It would have to pay for it at the very least.

plant and equipment? The fact needs to be established though that those companies are squatters on natural resources that belongs to the people.

If you own the land, you own the oil on it - the people don't own it.

The days of the Wild West are over when any squatter could claim resources that never belonged to them. It's time to change that wrong.

If you're going to be a communist, come out and say so. You have freedom to espouse and promote communism under the First Amendment.

a communist. There's a place for private ownership too. We the people own a lot of wilderness areas already. They are there for us, not for for the Koch brothers' Georgia Pacific to come in and log for their profits. Oil fields cover large areas underground underneath various private properties. They are not there for a foreign company to come in and exploit like BP. We should own all ores and minerals to be used for our common benefit. I could write pages on this and why it's not communism in the narrow Marxist terms that you are hinting at, but I leave you to do your own research on this.

If there is oil on your land, do you have to let the commons come onto it to drill for it? Jed Clampett objects.

Because that's what's going on.

If the oil is on your land, you can drill it yourself or hire Exxon. You can't hire the US government until Congress passes a law creating a public drilling company.

Do you claim private ownership for the sea? This is no different.

then you better take a good hard look at our right to water, that's right, I said, OUR RIGHT TO FRESH CLEAN WATER!.
There's very few things that we have absolute rights to, but air,food and water is something that all humans need to exist and if you're not worried about future supplies of unpolluted water, that isn't owned or controlled by some private entity, then you haven't been paying attention.
I can live without oil, gas and timber, but my right to air, food and water is absolute.

to sell back to us but to pollute with fracking when they can get a good price from the oil companies, which is why we need more than ever to claim that resource so it can be regulated by the people and for the people.

they have already been given those rights in some cases, by local, state and federal governments worldwide.
It's a crime against humanity and the planet, it needs to be stopped now.
Future generations are at risk.

The oil companies and lumber companies are leasing lots of public land.

Jeez, they can't even take care of the toys we buy for them.

that the real reason is defeatism and unimaginative thinking.

Being electric the Kochs will NEVER allow us to have HSR but they brainwash their followers that mass transit is socialism.

[font size=3]A developed country is not a place where the Poor have cars,
It is where the RICH ride Public Transportation.[/font]
--Enrique Penalosa, for­mer Mayor of Bogotá, Colombia

yeah, good point.

To some extent.

Really, it should. A military a fraction of its present size would still be too large. The mission must be scaled back until all our domestic needs are met.

Once and industry is established like the Oil industry and becomes large enough to control government it makes it imposable to develop more efficient means of transportation because that industry must constantly grow.
And it will be like a cancer that destroys the host.

I took a train from Nanjing to Shanghai - about 200 miles - and it was an extremely smooth ride the whole way. It was 200 miles and there were 5 or 6 stops and it took one hour and seven minutes. Amtrak from Boston to NYC is also about 200 miles, and it takes three hours.

Supposedly, the Chinese were building a faster train that would cut that 1:07 time to 30-40 minutes.

For instance, from this timetable, the fastest is 1 hour 7 minutes - but that's non-stop (G2, G4, G14, G16, G18). Add on stops, and the time inevitably gets quite a bit longer. 30-40 minutes would not be possible with 5 or 6 stops.

Not all the trains may be listed on an English language website?

The rest of the World has . . . none.

I guess you just aren't a real admiral until you have one under your command.

The hell of it is, though, that anti-ship missiles are, comparatively, dirt cheap, and it would only take a few hits from those to turn one of our big damn carriers into flaming junk.

We have 10.

But that also depends on how you define "Aircraft Carrier"

If you include Amphibious Assault Ships and Helicopter Carriers, then it is 19.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_in_service

The rest of the world has 18, though all but one are conventional propulsion. The French Carrier Charles de Gaulle is Nuclear powered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_in_service

We should bear in mind, however, that in the rest of the World no other nation has a single "Super Carrier" to compare with our big ones. They are our budget-busting follies, exclusively.

And the rest of the world has, as you said, none.

we voted for it back in 2008.

to Las Vegas?

It's a four hour drive to L.A. to Vegas.

Given the TSA bullshit one has to go through these days, driving to a train station, taking your shoes off, boarding a train, waiting for the late arrivals, and then climbing the grade from Fontana to Victorville would make the getting to Vegas experience well over four hours.

I'm drivin'. Air conditioned comfort, and I get to stop at the Alien Jerky place in Baker; get myself some garlic stuffed olives. All for the price of a single tank of gas.

--lots of people like me would prefer not to drive.

I've never understand why people who like cars so much wouldn't want less of them on the road.

I'm still able to drive from Long Beach to Sacramento in 7 hours for less than 40 bucks. Just did it this last Sunday.

The money would be better spent on fixing the 5 through Merced County...and also a shitload of local mass transit upgrades throughout the state.