Work is all consuming these days, hence the recent lapse in posting here.  I just wanted to make a couple observations about Obama's call for 50 some billion dollars to build a high speed rail here in the US.

• It's a make work boondoggle.  We would be better off printing up 50 billion and hosting a great bonfire on the National mall.  A least the wiener and marshmallow roast would be fun.
• If there was meaningful demand for a high speed rail system in the United States, then maybe business people would be trying to figure out how to pull it off.  Fact is there is no meaningful demand to justify the high cost of this.  And just as government-run Amtrak is underwater, so too will the high speed rail.  It's a stupid idea, and no surprise that Obama would call for it.
• It doesn't pioneer anything.  Modern high speed rail, has it's roots in the late 1950's in Japan.  Advances since then have been more or less incremental. 
  
• Isn't it interesting how Obama wants to drop 50+ billion on a high speed rail system when the Obama administration refused to fund a commuter rail tunnel under the Hudson river after the Governor of New Jersey balked at the staggering price tag the State was on the hook for? And there is plenty of local demand for rail service in the NYC metro area.
  
• Obama is perfectly willing to blow 50 mega-large on a rail system nobody needs, but has savaged NASA's budget, ended the Space Shuttle program, while de-funding it's replacement.  That 50+ billion would go a long way toward returning the US to the moon and beyond.  Here Obama shows us just how lacking he is in imagination or vision.
• Lastly, but certainly not the least, while NASA would be a better place to invest 50 billion, nonetheless we don't have the money either way.  And based on the latest news surrounding the federal budget cycle, Obama just doesn't get it.  Not at all.  We are broke.  The federal fiscal situation is our #1 national crisis, and Obama is offering us the same old tired liberal crap.  All aboard for a one-way ticket to fiscal hell.      

What do you suppose happens when a bullet train meets a brick wall? 

Ain't pretty.