Ward Churchill is in full meltdown mode. Last Thursday, he swatted a newspaper at a Denver tv reporter, when the reporter tried to ask about the "Winter Attack" painting. Churchill wants to get fired. Like the Pearcy couple here in Sacramento, he thrives on his own controversy. He lives for it.

The University may oblige him.

Internal discussions at Colorado University are centering on a buyout offer to controversial professor Ward Churchill in order to quell the tempest caused by his characterizations of victims of Sept. 11, 2001, as 'little Eichmans' and to avoid a costly, drawn-out lawsuit, the Denver Post reports.

. . .

Colorado regents have authorized an internal review of Churchill's writings and speeches to determine if he should be fired. A decision is scheduled for the week of March 7, although Churchill could appeal if the university terminates his employment. Such a dismissal, even if not mired in the controversy surrounding Churchill's case, could last years and inpose [sic] expensive legal costs.

Posted by: annika at 01:03 AM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
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Most likely, i wasn't going to vote for you anyway, but when you included that still photo in your tv spot showing you hugging Hillery, you sealed the deal against you.

Posted by: annika at 06:47 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Michelle Malkin has news on the latest outrage from chief CU liar Ward Churchill. Be sure to check out the description text in the eBay link, which repeats the Native American credentials lie, which even Churchill has admitted to.

What a kook.

Posted by: annika at 12:12 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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i already knew that Reuters won't use the word terrorist, but apparently they have an aversion to a few other words. Here's a google news page for today's top story. See if you can see what's missing.

US Citizen Accused of Discussing to Kill Bush
Reuters - 23 minutes ago

Man charged in alleged plot to kill Bush
CBC British Columbia, Canada - 42 minutes ago

Man charged for 'Bush death plot'
BBC News, UK - 1 hour ago

Man Charged in Alleged Plot to Kill Bush
ABC News - 1 hour ago

Virginia man accused of plot to assassinate Bush
Sun-Sentinel.com, FL - 1 hour ago

Plan to assassinate Bush
News24, South Africa - 1 hour ago

Man charged in alleged plot to kill Bush
San Jose Mercury News (subscription) - 2 hours ago

A plan to assassinate Bush?
Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel, FL - 38 minutes ago

Plan to Assassinate President Bush Revealed
Elites TV, TX - 38 minutes ago

Man Charged with Conspiracy to Assassinate Bush
WLNS, MI - 1 hour ago

US Citizen Plots to Assassinate President Bush
The Conservative Voice - 1 hour ago

Virginia Man Charged With Plot To Assassinate President Bush
Jackson Channel.com, MS - 58 minutes ago

Indictment alleges Bush assassination plot
WBBH, FL - 1 hour ago

Former High School Valedictorian Charged In Bush Assassination ...
KWTX, TX - 1 hour ago

Ex-Virginian accused in alleged plot on Bush
Richmond Times Dispatch, VA - 1 hour ago

Man charged in alleged plot to kill Bush
Salon - 20 minutes ago

US man accused of discussing to kill Bush
Reuters.uk, UK - 26 minutes ago

Houston native charged in Bush death plot
Houston Chronicle - 45 minutes ago

Former Saudi prisoner accused of Bush
Ireland Online, Ireland - 1 hour ago

Man Charged in Alleged Plot to Kill Bush
San Francisco Chronicle - 1 hour ago

Virginia man charged in alleged plot to assassinate Bush
San Diego Union Tribune - 1 hour ago

Man Charged in Alleged Plot to Kill Bush
Wired News - 2 hours ago

Man Charged in Alleged Plot to Kill Bush
Guardian, UK - 1 hour ago

Man Charged in Alleged Plot to Kill Bush
ABC News - 2 hours ago

Valedictorian Charged With Plotting Bush's Assassination
WFIE-TV, IN - 22 minutes ago

Man Charged In Alleged Plot To Kill Bush
KFMB, CA - 18 minutes ago

Man charged in alleged plot to kill Bush
Albany Times Union, NY - 1 hour ago

Virginia man charged in alleged plot to assassinate Bush
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, MO - 1 hour ago

Virginia Man Charged in Alleged Plot to Assassinate President
7Online.com, NY - 1 hour ago

Man Charged in Alleged Plot to Assassinate Bush
WJXX, FL - 1 hour ago

Update: i was wrong. In some limited contexts, Reuters is perfectly comfortable using a word like "terrorist," for example.

Bastards.

Posted by: annika at 10:01 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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On ABC's This Week With George Stepopotamus, terrorism "expert" Dicke Clarke made the following pronouncement

Terrorists can't make a nuclear weapon.

i'll ignore the way you stammered when George Will pointed out that terrorists could simply buy a nuclear weapon.

Posted by: annika at 08:46 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Maybe i'm wrong, but isn't there the potential for a dangerous progression of hatred in the recent post-election gnashing of teeth by the American left.

In other words, doesn't this. . .

'I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for,' former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean told Democrats gathered at a Manhattan hotel.

Bush supporters need not apply (we hate that asshole). Also, you should be a student as well. House has 4 easy-going, liberal, intelligent male students and one friendly, intelligent dog.

This sweet little children's teddy bear [for sale at CafePress.com] bears the phrase 'Save America, Kill Republicans'. The caption for the item . . . reads:

Making fun of Repubicans won't get them on our side, but threatening to kill them might be more effective.

The FBI and Auburn police are investigating the discovery of an incendiary device that was left at the entrance of the Placer County Courthouse over the weekend.

The discovery raised questions about whether the device was connected to a series of arsons and attempted arsons in Northern California by someone claiming to be with the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group.

. . .

The Auburn Police Department said Sunday's incident was troubling because it diverged from the pattern established in the other attacks. Instead of targeting a site under construction, whoever planted the most recent device did so at a historic landmark.

People need to cool it, seriously.
_______________

* Placer County, by the way, is one of California's reddest counties, voting for Bush 63% to 37%.

Posted by: annika at 11:56 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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At A Western Heart,* C.B. posts a great fisking of Gore Vidal's apperance on the Australian Broadcasting Company's Lateline with Tony Jones.

Vidal is truly an American Idiot. One of those irrational leftists who likes to go abroad and speak out of his ass. i loved this statement, wherein he accuses the Bush administration of lying, and as support for his accusation, he strings together a bunch of real whoppers.

That is what the people around Bush have discovered: you repeat the lie, and if people look slightly doubtful, you repeat it again more loudly, and you go on and on. Bush went on for about three years getting ready for the Iraq war, saying that Osama bin Laden, responsible for the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, was working hand in glove with Saddam Hussein, who was equally guilty; therefore, we were going to remove Saddam Hussein, because he was so vicious.

The Australian audience for Lateline can't have been expected to know that Bush never made such a statement, let alone repeated it "again more loudly . . . on and on." But i followed the election closely, and Vidal's statement is a boldfaced lie. The closest anyone ever got to pinning the accusation that the Bush administration made an explicit connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein is one sentence in one document. i blogged about this last June.

i think it's despicable that Vidal goes to another country, and uses that line about repeating the big lie (which is a veiled Nazi reference), and then lies himself, thinking he can get away with it.

Kudos to the Australian host, whom i am unfamiliar with, but he did challenge Vidal's assertion that America is a despotic country.

TONY JONES: Despotism, though, and tyranny implies a suppression of dissent. I mean, there's no bar to open dissent in the United States; just simply whether you can get on to the corporate media.

. . .

Gore Vidal, I think you are living proof, however, that dissent is still living in the United States.

* A Western Heart is new international group blog, where i've been recently added as a contributor. There's some good stuff there; i'd love it if you'd go check it out.

Posted by: annika at 10:00 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Via Blackfive:

On January 30th, 2005, Senator Kerry told Tim Russert on Meet the Press that he would sign an SF 180 in order to release all of his military records. So far, no signature.

[redacted to avoid frivolous and malicious claims by hypocritical and attention hungry public figures]

Posted by: annika at 11:14 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Howard Dean is now the Democratic National Committee Chairman. Many of us on the right see this as a very positive development for Republicans. But it's not a done deal yet.

The Democrats are not stupid. Clueless, yes, but they're not unaware that we Republicans have been hoping that the end result of the Democratic Party's post-election soul searching would be a leftward over-correction. Knowing how happy we are at Dean's ascension, i would think that they'll try to mitigate their image problem with middle-of-the-road voters in time for the mid-term elections.

Plus, Howard Dean is energetic, smart, and the truth is, he's not quite as liberal as people think. Being anti-war made him the darling of the unwashed anti-globalization hippie crowd, but how many of them really understood his views on the less sexy issues. Like for instance, globalization. In any case, he's the DNC chair, not a candidate. And he has a proven record of innovative and effective fund raising.

Still, the DNC's choice signals that the party has decided to give the finger to the voices of reason who have been urging a move to the center since their November debacle. That's just crazy strategy.

What the Bush haters of the ultra-left do not understand is that in their zeal to transform America into their vision of the perfect atheist libertine utopia, they have abandoned the political center to the conservatives. If Republicans are not forced to fight for centrist voters, they will have no incentive to moderate the conservative policies that the left wants so desperately to destroy. The result is a party in power that feels free to move to the right.

i think you realize that i have no problem with that.

Here's how i see the next few years working out, though: A defiant Democratic Party (financed and led by the true-believers of the fringe left) insists on continuing the message of negativity that lost it the presidency in 2004. The mid-terms are a disaster as the Republican Party consolidates its power even further.

All the while, back-bencher Hillary Clinton lays low, putting distance between herself and her former, more shrill image. She reaches out to the political center. Then, at the right moment, she makes the long-expected announcement. Hillary rides in on her white horse, the best hope of the Party to save the Democrats from self-destruction by the far left.

Rank-and-file Democrats flock to her side in the early primaries, like they did to Kerry in '04, convinced of Hillary's "electability" over the more out-of-touch liberals favored by the party intelligentsia. (That's exactly why Kerry got the nomination, while the media was trying to convince everyone it would be Dean.)

Hillary, the so-called "smartest woman in the world" emerges, perfectly positioned to gobble up the center for Democrats who've grown tired of their years in the wilderness. And if the Republicans don't manage to find an exciting candidate to run against her in 2008, we may be in for the old Clinton bait-and-switch again.*
_______________

* That's when the candidate runs as a moderate, but as soon as the election is over, hits you with that old-time liberal agenda.

Cross-posted at A Western Heart.

Posted by: annika at 12:40 PM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
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i'm amazed at the speed with which this under-the-radar scandal took him down. i'm not surprised that his resignation was announced on Friday afternoon, after the talk radio shows were over.

i would have expected Jordan to fight this longer. Big media has to be pissed as the number of news execs run out of town by the blogosphere continues to grow.

Expect future calls for legislative action to control blogs. Because, make no mistake, Jordan was kooky for years, but the story that did him in was completely ignored outside the blogosphere.

Mark at Decision '08 notes that in contrast to Rathergate,

This time it was the bloggers, and the bloggers alone, that pushed this man out. That will be heady stuff for some; it will scare the pants off of others...but what does it mean, really? Have we entered an era where our lives can be destroyed by a pack of wolves hacking at their keyboards with no oversight, no editors, and no accountability? Or does it mean that we've entered a brave new world where the MSM has become irrelevant?

It's ironic that an entire generation of journalists, who consider their greatest accomplishment to be the forced resignation of Richard Nixon, must now look over their own shoulders and fear a new generation of muckrakers.

Update: Jungle Book lovers, like myself, will enjoy this witty take-off by Vanderleun at American Digest. Excerpt:

Ye may post for yourselves, and your country, blog your cats if you must, and ye can;
But post not for pleasure of sacking unless you sack Eason Jordan!

Posted by: annika at 09:31 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Someone new has crashed the party, although it's not like we weren't expecting them. Add North Korea to this list:

The United States
Great Britian
France
Russia
China
India
Pakistan
Israel
South Africa (quit the club in 1991)

i knew this was inevitable. South Africa's experience notwithstanding, how do you put the genie back in the bottle? Looking at things from the dictator's perspective, what incentive do they have not to lie, delay and continue jerking off the international community until they have a fully stocked arsenal? Who's going to stop them? A nuclear arsenal enables North Korea to bully their neighbors even more easily, why would anyone expect them to voluntarily negotiate away that power?

Now it looks like we're stuck in South Korea, as an already bad situation has gotten much, much worse.

Posted by: annika at 09:23 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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1 I'm not quite sure how this changes anything. North Korea has always SAID a lot of things--including that it WASN'T working on nuclear weapons. And I'm pretty sure we've been planning assuming they did. If anything, this is a reason to pull our troops out of South Korea and to areas where they won't be incinerated in case of attack.

Posted by: ken at February 10, 2005 09:49 AM (xD5ND)

2 I'm pretty sure this only confirms what we already knew. Assuming they're not lying about this. . .

Posted by: Matt at February 10, 2005 01:25 PM (SIlfx)

3 Matt's right, there's nothing unexpected here, and in the twisted mind of Kim Bung Hol, it was the next logical step. He wanted bi-lateral talks with us so he could extort money from us, like he did with those no-good cocksuckers Willie and Jimmy. W wouldn't play dat game, and insisted in multi-lateral regional talks with his neighbors. Ultimately, the ChiComs will send him the message, "When we want shit out of you, we'll squeeze your head". Besides, I still have that one in the basement that Rog gave me, and I know for a fact that his barn is FULL of them, second amendment ya know.

Posted by: Casca at February 10, 2005 04:06 PM (cdv3B)

4 Did i not say: "i knew this was inevitable?"

Posted by: annika at February 10, 2005 04:22 PM (zAOEU)

5 "Did i not say: 'i knew this was inevitable?'" Isn't it curious that the answers "Yes, you did not" and "No, you did not" mean the same thing? Jus' sayin' is all.

Posted by: Tuning Spork at February 10, 2005 06:37 PM (FVav8)

6 For the record, we're not in Korea to keep the NorK's from coming South, but vice versa.

Posted by: Casca at February 10, 2005 07:34 PM (cdv3B)

7 Casca, huh?

Posted by: Ted at February 11, 2005 05:11 AM (blNMI)

8 The logical thing to do would be to give nukes to Japan and South Korea. That would wake China up.

Posted by: Drew at February 11, 2005 08:39 AM (3MNCN)

9 i thought about the idea of universal proliferation, but there's a tremendous downside to that, especially with countries like Iran in control of fanatics who don't care about the MAD deterrent.

Posted by: annika at February 11, 2005 09:10 AM (zAOEU)

10 Japan has GOT to be working on something. Yes, I know about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and we love peace bla bla bla, but they've GOT to be working on something.

Posted by: Ontario Emperor at February 11, 2005 12:47 PM (FPdMX)

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i thought i'd send an urgent e-mail to the brain trust at MSNBC, AP, CBS et al. How long do you think they'll run with my story before they figure out it's not true? more...

Posted by: annika at 07:23 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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i wonder what the left wing pundits would have said during the height of our country's civil rights movement. Would they have the gall to call African American voters risking their lives to cast a ballot just "an exercise in pretty pictures."

Voting matters. Democracy matters. Back in the sixties there were many people, i'm sure, who said that African Americans didn't want to vote, and couldn't be trusted to participate in Democracy. Those people were called Klansmen.*

Are the nay-sayers in the media, who refuse to see the democratization of Iraq as a good thing, any different than old fashioned racists?
_______________

* You know about the Klan. That's the organization that Democratic Senator Robert Byrd joined.

Posted by: annika at 12:31 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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...iraqi elections are a failure...

...not all iraqis voted...

...turnout was only 60%...

...under saddam 100% of iraqis voted...

...that's a 40% drop-off...

...new government is illegitimate...

...errr...

...uhhh...

...halliburton!!! halliburton!!! halliburton!!! halliburton!!! halliburton!!! aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!!!...

...abu graib abu graig abu graib abu graig abu graib abu graig abu graib abu graig abu graib abu graig abu graib abu graig abu graib abu graig abu graib abu graig abu graib abu graig abu graib abu graig abu graib abu graig aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!!!!!!...

...WMDs WMDs Condi lied WMDs WMDs Condi lied WMDs WMDs Condi lied WMDs WMDs Condi lied WMDs WMDs Condi lied WMDs WMDs Condi lied WMDs WMDs Condi lied WMDs WMDs Condi lied WMDs WMDs Condi lied WMDs WMDs Condi lied !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...

...gaaaaaa buh buh buuuh ga ga ga...

[head explodes]

Posted by: annika at 08:27 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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1 Ha! That's classic.

Posted by: Micah at January 30, 2005 09:09 PM (v/oTo)

2 Did you expect anything different? I was looking forward to the post election spin. There is nothing like watching "liberals" going crazy over the successful creation of liberal democracy by a Republican. These people would complain that the hot temperature in Philadelphia in 1786 and cost of travel kept the "common" people out of creating the new republic. These people are a joke! And they wonder why they lose elections!

Posted by: lawguy at January 30, 2005 10:15 PM (U0IaD)

3 Anyone catch Joe Leiberman yesterday? I think the guy is either in the wrong political party, or he is just a real, honest to goodness statesman. Come to think of it, probably both.

Posted by: shelly at January 30, 2005 11:40 PM (ywZa8)

4 Leiberman has been amazing since the election. It ocurred to me as well that, at least where foreign policy is concerned he is definately in the wrong party. So sad that some turn the delivery from tyranny into a Democrat/Republican thing. Doubly sad when you consider Republicans are on the side of freedom.

Posted by: Pursuit at January 31, 2005 05:04 AM (VqIuy)

5 Buy these. They should make you feel better. (Found via Manolo, and I can't remember his stupid URL.)

Posted by: Victor and his seventeen pet rats at January 31, 2005 09:29 AM (L3qPK)

6 Heeeeee. This entry made me laugh so hard I...well, it's best that I stop there.

Posted by: other Annika at January 31, 2005 10:56 AM (QvFUG)

7 lol, thanks annika. Victor, does your girlfriend know you're surfing shoe sites?

Posted by: annika at January 31, 2005 11:25 AM (0GJWe)

8 I surf Manolo sites because he's funny as cat piss. Geez, annika, if you didn't like the boots you could've just said so.

Posted by: Victor at January 31, 2005 01:02 PM (L3qPK)

9 Awww Victor, i love the boots. they're gorgeous! When can i expect them in the mail? i scrolled through the rest of that site, did you see these? they'd be great if i ever decide to become an elvis impersonator!

Posted by: annika at January 31, 2005 04:30 PM (zAOEU)

10 As opposed to Democrats who are opposed to freedom? Narrowminded twit

Posted by: Shannon at February 02, 2005 06:50 AM (TM7tZ)

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i've been out all day and i just got in, so i turned on the tv to find out how the elections are going. Geraldo is on a rooftop, waving at the pilots in the Longbows circling overhead. Cameras inside the polling place show a couple of election workers sitting at tables, but no voters. Geraldo is wearing a flak vest. He's talking by remote with Susan Estrich, who's being as pissy as ever: she's happy but, but, but, where are the WMDs? Idiot. And there's a lone voter down below, waving the Iraqi flag bravely as he walks from the polling place.

Geraldo is in Baghdad, i think. He's very optimistic, but judging by the video, things don't look too promising. Hopefully there are more voters in other parts of the country. i'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Update: First off, did you see Condi on the George Stepanopolus Comedy hour this morning? Hott! She looks great in a black suit and my bitch boots. When she asked me if she could borrow them, i was all "i don't know babe, are you sure..." But dayyumm, gurl!!!

Nextly, Ted was right. Stepanoplus says that turnout estimates range from 55% to 70% and Fox news picks a number in the middle, at about 60%. By any standard, this has to be seen as great news.

Now, Evan Bayh is telling George Stepalotomous that he disagrees with the fat senator from Massachussetts, we shouldn't cut and run. Steppopotamus is now asking why the senator voted against Condi Rice. Bayh is talking, but i'm not getting a clear answer from him. He voted no because of her "mistakes in judgment" but that doesn't seem consistent with a centrist position. i think Senator Bayh's vote may come back to haunt him if he meets Senator Clinton, who voted yes, in the primaries.

Update 2: Why does every pundit feel the need to remind us that "just because the elections were successful, doesn't mean that there won't be more violence." Is there anyone in the world who believed that the insurgency would end after the election? Has anyone said that?

Update 3: Let's not forget that today is the Vice President's sixty-fourth birthday. Happy Birthday Dick!

Update 4: Here's an excellent question. i know the answer though. They're a bunch of hypocritical cowards.

Update 5: Moxie posted today: "...for those of us who love America, the beauty and payoff was seeing the joy (of those who previously had to vote for Saddam or face his assassins) vote yesterday for what they believed. Without fear." Nicely put.

Posted by: annika at 11:05 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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See Publicola...? Not every 2A story out of California turns out badly.

A Modesto homeowner who said he's been the victim of numerous burglaries in recent weeks shot a man who allegedly broke into his home Thursday morning.

Greg Collins' home is undergoing extensive remodeling. Collins said he slept in his garage overnight with a shotgun in an effort to protect his property.

At 5:25 a.m., Collins said he was awakened by the sounds of an intruder breaking in to the garage.

'Luckily, I found the shotgun, pointed it at him, told him to freeze ... He chose to lunge at me, so I had no choice at that point but to shoot him. I did use a 12-gauge shotgun so that I wouldn't kill the man,' he said.

Is there hope for Cali yet?

Posted by: annika at 09:28 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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When i first heard about the Glendale Metrolink disaster, yesterday morning while getting ready for school, my first reaction was typically post 9/11. i turned on the tv, saw the helicopter footage of the scattered train cars, then the announcer said, "President Bush will speak to the nation in a few moments." Shit, i thought, another Madrid?! i had jumped to an unnecessary conclusion, thanks to the strange juxtaposition of news stories at the moment i turned on the tv. But it got me thinking how vulnerable our rail system is to sabotage.

The L.A. Daily News headline asks a question that we all know the answer to: "Could any safety procedures have prevented this tragedy?" The short answer is no. The long answer is yes, but making train travel completely safe would make it so expensive that passenger rail could not exist.

Engineers, lawmakers and others engaged the issues of rail safety and security on Wednesday as Southern California reacted to the tragedy.

Some said the main factor is the lack of grade separation -- allowing the trains to operate at street level -- with only small barriers to deter motorists from getting caught on the tracks.

'If you look at our train systems out here, there are many more accidents and deaths here than elsewhere,' Moore said. 'It's 50 to 100 times higher than the national average, just from people attempting to commit suicide. And one of the reasons for that is the tracks are very accessible.

'If they had put through grade separation, they would never have been able to afford the system. If grade separation had been required, there would have been no Metrolink. And, now, maybe there shouldn't be.'

Metrolink officials have said grade crossings cost $20 million to $50 million each -- while the agency has an annual operating budget of $110 million.

Posted by: annika at 01:37 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 I loved travelling by train in Europe, too, and I do think there's a place for it in heavily-traveled areas of the US. Amtrak has been a disaster for passenger rail in this country, as have, to a lesser extent, most of the local commuter rail systems in places that have them: what's needed is privatization and competition. That much said, whenever I hear "high-speed rail," it brings out the cynic in me now: it's yet another costly policy boondoggle in the far-too-easily-amended Florida Constitution, alongside mandatory maximum public-school class sizes, toys and space for pregnant pigs, etc., etc., ad nauseaum.

Posted by: Dave J at January 27, 2005 07:34 PM (CXTdL)

2 & exactly who will pay for this mass transit system that I won't ever use? The problem with rail in the u.s. is there's just not a viable market for it over long distances. There could be if the gov stepped the hell back & let the market do its thing - but America is not europe. We're more spread out & we have different cultural attitudes towards travel. Rail works fine in densely populated areas surrounded by more densely populated areas. It doesn't seem to work as well over big gaps in populated areas. Taking a train from say madrid to seville is one thing. Taking a train from denver to L.A. is another. & since your boy Arnold has been so on the job bannin bolt action rifles to prevent any sort of disaster, think he'll ban SUV's? After all they've caused more deaths in a single day than a whole group of rifles have ever caused (through criminal misuse that is). Anyway, it's not because of the attacks of september the 11th that rail may not be viable - it's because the government is really all wet on most of its rail proposals. The market could pull it off perhaps, but the gov will just make a theft-subsidized mess of things. Did I mention its not to late to leave Cali?

Posted by: Publicola at January 27, 2005 09:27 PM (zTap3)

3 "Taking a train from say madrid to seville is one thing. Taking a train from denver to L.A. is another." Let me make it clear that I agree with that completely. The one place in the US where passenger rail currently actually turns an operating profit is along the Northeast corridor from DC up to Boston, which, of course, Amtrak and Congress then use to susbsidize routes elsewhere that should be allowed to wither and die. But private rail systems in other densely medium-length transit markets could probably fill a niche where a lot of people would rather not drive that long, nor pay as much to fly. Of course, Amtrak is currently MORE expensive than flying quite frequently, which makes it completely useless, but multiple private passenger operations would change that. And rather than obsessively build high-speed lines, they could certainly at least start with the preexisting infrastructure to keep their costs down, either by "renting" the tracks from the freight railroads or being operating divisions of those railroads themselves. After all, unlike passengers, a sizeable percentage of the country's long-distance cargo still does move by rail.

Posted by: Dave J at January 28, 2005 07:16 AM (CXTdL)

4 As DaveJ points out, rail freight is very important, much more so than passenger rail. I think it's correct that the US makes significantly more use of rail for freight than does Europe (although water transportation in Europe does carry some of the goods that would move by rail in the US.) Those who talk about Europe's "superior" railroads tend to neglect this factor.

Posted by: David Foster at January 28, 2005 07:28 AM (l0XTT)

5 There's a reason why there is no private rail mass transit in the US. You do the math. Anything that will drive perfidious govvie tit-suckers from the field works for me.

Posted by: Casca at January 29, 2005 07:35 AM (cdv3B)

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Here's more evidence for my theory about violence and the left wing. From The Associated Press:

The sons of a first-term congresswoman and Milwaukee's former acting mayor were among five Democratic activists charged Monday with slashing the tires of vans rented by Republicans to drive voters and monitors to the polls on Election Day.

. . .

The activists — all employees of the John Kerry campaign — are accused of flattening the tires on 25 vehicles rented by the state Republican Party to get out the vote and deliver poll watchers Nov. 2.

. . .

A criminal complaint said the defendants originally planned to put up Democratic yard signs, placards and bumper stickers at the Republican office in a scheme they called 'Operation Elephant Takeover.' But the plan was dropped when they learned a security guard was posted at the GOP office, the complaint said.

One witness told investigators the five defendants, dressed in 'Mission Impossible' type gear, black outfits and knit caps, left the Democratic Party headquarters at about 3 a.m. on Nov. 2, and returned about 20 minutes later, extremely excited and talking about how they had slashed the tires.

Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesman Seth Boffeli said the five were paid employees of Kerry's campaign, but were not acting on behalf of the campaign or party.

. . .

Rick Wiley, state GOP executive director, discovered the vandalism on the morning of Election Day.

'It was unbelievable that people could stoop this low in a political campaign,' he said. 'I figured it had to be someone from the opposition. But I didn't think someone on the paid Kerry campaign would do this.'

Wiley didn't say whether the vandalism prevented anyone from voting, but said poll watchers were about two hours late.

Posted by: annika at 08:50 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Two prominent Democratic senators today announced that they are against the confirmation of the first black female secretary of state in our nation's history. When confirmed, Condoleezza Rice, Ph.D. will be the highest ranking African American woman ever. A milestone achievement by an admirable and deserving woman.

But two Democratic senators, Barbara Boxer of California and John Kerry of Massachussetts, do not want to see it happen. Today, these two senators placed on the record, for all to see, their announcement to the world that they are indeed bigots.

Oh of course Boxer and Kerry would deny such an accusation vehemently. They would insist that they've always fought on behalf of minorities and women. But using the same twisted logic that senator Boxer used to call Dr. Rice a liar, i think it should be clear to all that John Kerry and Barbara Boxer have something against the advancement of women and minorities.

i'm just pointing out the contradictions in their public statements, that's all.

At this historic moment in the history of feminism and civil rights, John Kerry and Barbara Boxer stand together at the doorway of the Harry S. Truman Building like twin modern day Orval Faubi.

More: Steve at The Black Republican has more on Sheets Bird's opposition to Dr. Rice.

Posted by: annika at 03:08 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Since the Pope has such influence, why doesn't he just get in his popemobile and go down to Iraq and ask the terrorists to stop killing people? It couldn't hurt.

Posted by: annika at 09:15 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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