NASCAR CARs WHOA GIT ER DUN DALE JR!

4/8/2009 5:42:33 PM

he sent the military in to fuck up those pirates


too bad he didnt massacre them and the people at their base of operations

[Edited on April 12, 2009 at 4:30 PM. Reason : .]

4/12/2009 4:29:37 PM

the Kennedy's gave him a Portuguese Water Dog. I find it ironic that the Kennedys gave him a water dog . . .

[Edited on April 12, 2009 at 9:45 PM. Reason : ']

4/12/2009 9:39:02 PM

Quote :

"The White House allotted tickets for the event to gay and lesbian parents as part of the administration's effort to reach out to diverse communities. Representatives from Family Equality Council, Human Rights Campaign, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and other groups confirmed earlier that they were invited and encouraged to have their members participate. "

- http://www.mercurynews.com/nationworld/ci_12132336



at the White House Egg Roll.

4/13/2009 12:30:56 PM

^ there was something on the news about that this weekend, saying that they alloted tickets to that group because the group had specifically been denied tickets under Bush.

then there was a mother on camera complaining about how it's "not fair" that the group gets "special attention" from the WH with the allocated tickets, and they should "wait in line like everybody else."
oh, wait - she didn't wait in line either. She was the mother of a local DC school kid, who had tickets allotted specifically for her child's school

4/13/2009 12:52:30 PM

Quote :

"Worked for the dems, didn't it?"

lol no, what worked for the dems is having bush in office.

4/13/2009 1:06:18 PM

Quote :

"Obama eases travel, money transfers for Cuban-Americans ... The announcement fulfills an Obama campaign promise, and comes less than a week before he attends a summit with Latin American leaders; many of those leaders have urged the U.S. to moderate its stance towards the communist government of Cuba. ... The adminstration is also allowing telecommunications companies to seek cellphone and television services linking Cuba and the United States, according to Obama's order."

- http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2009-04-13-obama-cuba_N.htm

nice move

Democrats > Republicans

except this guy:

Quote :

"But another Republican conservative — Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona — praised Obama's action. "One would expect the Cuban government to tell its citizens where they can and can't travel, but for our government to impose similar restrictions has never made sense," Flake said."

[Edited on April 13, 2009 at 4:50 PM. Reason : ]

[Edited on April 13, 2009 at 4:52 PM. Reason : ]

4/13/2009 4:49:53 PM

He capped them motha-fuckin-pirates, yo!

4/13/2009 11:29:05 PM

http://www.wral.com/news/political/story/4964335/

Quote :

"Obama: Better trains foster energy independence"

I wasnt a big fan of the stimulus package but I can get on board with projects like this

4/16/2009 1:21:49 PM

obama released four torture memos that are largely unredacted. this is some gruesome stuff. i think that this should be grounds to open hearings into war crimes on DOJ folks for arguing that these clear methods of torture (such as confining prisoners with insects and telling them that they were "stinging insects" as well as waterboarding and confining prisoners in coffin-like spaces for long periods of time) were legal. anyway, here's the link:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/radio/2009/04/16/aclu/index.html

4/16/2009 5:36:43 PM

^that shit is YIKES

4/16/2009 6:02:50 PM

nice weaseling

Quote :

"The memo then describes waterboarding in excruciating detail, matter-of-factly noting: "the subject's body responds as if the subject were drowning." Amazingly, it concludes that "the use of waterboarding constitutes a threat of imminent death," but is nonethless permissible and legal because it does not result in "prolonged mental harm.""

heard on the radio that Eric Holder said they will not prosecute or charge any of the actual interrogators because they were OK'd from above. I wonder how far up the chain they will go, though, before they start prosecuting.

I'm at my grandma's, where Fox News is in the background most of the time. Bret Baier is on now, and the focus of the story is "did Obama go too far in releasing top secret documents"

4/16/2009 6:03:22 PM

fox news is hilarious

yep, obama went too far by releasing the documents. nevermind the content of the documents.

fuck fox news

4/16/2009 6:09:31 PM

Quote :

"Rahm Emanuel told an (unnamed) Jewish leader; "In the next four years there is going to be a permanent status arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians on the basis of two states for two peoples, and it doesn't matter to us at all who is prime minister." He also said that the United States will exert pressure to see that deal is put into place."Any treatment of the Iranian nuclear problem will be contingent upon progress in the negotiations and an Israeli withdrawal from West Bank territory," the paper reports Emanuel as saying. In other words, US sympathy for Israel's position vis a vis Iran depends on Israel's willingness to live up to its commitment to get out of the West Bank and permit the establishment of a Palestinian state there, in Gaza, and East Jerusalem."

- http://israelpolicyforum.ngphost.com/blog/emanuel-says-obama-insists-implementing-two-state-solution-no-ifs-ands-or-buts


Seems like a refreshingly assertive stance to take on things...

4/17/2009 12:44:07 PM

I heard on the news this morning Obama's behind an initiative to build a high speed train network connecting several cities.

I like the idea of this very much.

4/17/2009 1:10:54 PM

this would be sweet
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/04/16/A-Vision-for-High-Speed-Rail/



high speed rail was probably my favorite thing about living in Germany for a year. We could get anywhere in Europe within hours with a combination of cheap plane trips, regional rail, and public transport in all the cities.

4/18/2009 9:49:41 PM

why is jacksonville to orlando not part of this proposal, that'd be a pain in the ass.

4/18/2009 10:50:30 PM

well, there are thousands of routes tat some people will want for convenience, and if a good backbone is actually built (fat chance...) then there will be plenty of capillaries to be built.

4/18/2009 11:19:40 PM

What a complete nightmare. I pray that they quietly drop any such high-speed rail initiative. Yes, many European countries are small enough they can afford the subsidies required by highspeed rail, but here in America the distances are substantial enough to make it completely hopeless. Buy an airline ticket and be done with it.

High speed rail should be scrapped. What we need to do is fix our existing transport sectors. Many cities have cartellized crucial transport sectors, from cabs to buses, while most have simply abandoned any resemblance of rationality and thrown good money after bad light rail. We need to lose our irrational affinity for trains; busses just work better on technical grounds. They are just missing the legal structure required for a competitive bus system similar to Britain to emerge.

Public transport needs to get cheaper, that means getting management out of the hands of the city council so a real management can go about crushing the transport unions. When Britain privatised its bus system the number of routes increased, ridership rose, the number of workers fell, and wages were slashed 40%. If we did the same here we would go a long way towards getting people out of their cars and into wifi connected bus lines.

But, no. This is America and rather than save money by setting our bus network free, we would rather dump trillions of dollars into high-speed rail lines very few are going to use.

4/19/2009 1:00:35 AM

this is gonna make jobs even harder to find

basically makes someones job search area a lot bigger, therefore more competition

4/19/2009 1:47:38 AM

More competition, yes, but also more employers. As such, a larger search area should not have a substantial impact upon relative employment.

4/19/2009 2:06:49 AM

trains > busses

4/19/2009 2:14:32 AM

busses > trains

4/19/2009 3:35:49 PM

busses and trains are complementary to each other, people, not competitors

4/19/2009 3:39:39 PM

Quote :

"This is America and rather than save money by setting our bus network free, we would rather dump trillions of dollars into high-speed rail lines very few are going to use. "

true that. It doesn't help matters any that our idea of high speed rail is much slower than that of Europe and Asian countries, so buses would be faster anyway. By the time we get our rail projects upgraded and working, electric buses for long distance travel will be a reality anyway.

[Edited on April 19, 2009 at 5:47 PM. Reason : and we could take that stimulus money and dump it into our interstate funds so everyone benefits]

4/19/2009 5:46:06 PM

4/19/2009 6:13:55 PM

BoBo's paradox:

Quote :

"The problem with vision is, it takes 30 yrs to figure out who has it."

4/19/2009 9:58:53 PM

About the rail topic...if buses are such a better clear cut answer than rail, why does rail keep hanging around? Is it just because the current generation of politicians running the show grew up in the time of rail and they harbor some sort of nostalgia for it or something?

4/19/2009 10:23:38 PM

rail is faster than buses for long distance and potentially cheaper. problem with long-distance commuter rail like acela is that they share the rail. if these rail arteries are separate from shipping rail lines, there will be far less delays and a potential for much faster travel.

4/19/2009 10:36:00 PM

Well, like Snark said, why not just hop a plane? Or, are we eventually going to head down the cost of oil/the trains will be electrified by nuclear argument?

4/19/2009 10:40:21 PM

trains are far more efficient than planes. plus if we pull our heads out of our asses and realize that trains can't ever be fully-secure, then they could be FAR less of a hassle to board than planes. friend was telling me that you can board a train in japan to go across the country with as much ease as riding a subway in a major city.

4/19/2009 10:44:48 PM

iirc trains use gas more efficiently than planes or busses.

4/19/2009 10:45:10 PM

any high speed commuter rail will/should be electric, so the gas efficiency compared to plane/bus is a moot point (unless it's compared to the efficiency of electricity generation and transmission)

4/19/2009 10:52:40 PM

I wouldn't consider the 25% greater fuel efficiency of current rail technology to current bus technology to be that significant, considering how freely buses can move around and don't require ridiculous amounts of new infrastructure to run on. For reference, check out the data in table 2-12 at the US DOE. http://cta.ornl.gov/data/chapter2.shtml

Also, we're not going to electrify our high speed rail system in this country because we'll still be sharing the rails with our existing train routes. You can't run diesel units on a line with overhead electric lines.

4/19/2009 11:30:38 PM

high speed trains and sharing existing routes is an oxymoron. there's going to be new tracks

4/19/2009 11:35:09 PM

Quote :

"rail is faster than buses for long distance and potentially cheaper."

Not so. An express non-stop bus on a highway can make 70mph. Meanwhile, while the Acela can manage 125mph, it also needs to make stops along the way. That is because there is not a whole train worth of people going from NY to DC at 10am. However, there is a whole bus worth of people making the trip, so you can run a nonstop bus.

Now, The schedules are not comparable in the northeast corridor because the road builders have not done their job. Therefore, yes, the Acela (3hours) is faster than a Boltbus (4hours), but only because the latter is stuck in traffic.

The economics of the issue is even more clear when you look at up-front costs. It costs about the same to build a non-highspeed light-rail link as it does to build a four lane highway. However, it costs far less to maintain a fleet of busses than it does to run a fleet of passenger trains, with the added benefit that the 99.8% of the highway not currently is use for the busses can also carry trucks, local busses, and automobiles.

4/19/2009 11:50:53 PM

Quote :

"high speed trains and sharing existing routes is an oxymoron. there's going to be new tracks "

go ahead and think that. any new tracks being built will be shared also.

4/19/2009 11:58:44 PM

someone is going to need to create a more comfortable bus before it becomes a major tool for travelers.

4/20/2009 12:03:27 AM

^^^ have you ever been anywhere with a decent train system? Travel around Germany for a couple weeks by train and see if you could match anywhere close to the speed or efficiency with busses. Your little multiple-stop complaint and the "full bus" vs. "full train" theories appear to be half-baked thoughts with no real experience of how real rail networks work.

"but only because the latter is stuck in traffic"
gee, our current busses are not as efficient as trains "only because" of traffic. gosh, if we could just get rid of all that damn traffic, then busses would move so quickly. no shit - you think?

I don't think anybody is naive enough to think the US could duplicate the European rail system, for a lot of reasons, but it's still an admirable goal to get something in the US that fits our country and life styles.


^^ if they're built with overhead electric wires, they won't be sharing with anything non-compatible with those, obviously

[Edited on April 20, 2009 at 12:09 AM. Reason : .]

4/20/2009 12:05:50 AM

at one point we didn't have an interstate system, that had to start somewhere too

4/20/2009 12:06:47 AM

^^ I have been. I have also read the government statistics on those rail routes, and they are truely insane. For many rail trips in Europe, particularly France, for every dollar the passenger spent on the ticket, the government had to match it, sometimes exceed it. So, yes, we can have a pretty rail network that gives everyone a warm fuzzy, but it is done at the expense of the nation's taxpayers, the majority of which do not use them. Constrast that with America's road network, where almost all roads were paid for through fuel taxes, and thefore paid for by those that use them.

And yes, I do think, that's why I said it. If we stopped wasting money on rail, we could vastly expand the nation's road capacity, alleviating the traffic for everyone, including the bus riders.

pooljobs, the express busses I've been on were much more comfortable than any airplane, I'd say they were competitive with the Amtrak seats, although Amtrak did give more legroom. Also, the express busses of today have free wifi and power jacks for laptops. What more can you want for less than $25?

So what? A world with highspeed rail is poorer than one with an expanded interstate highway system. That is because a highway can carry both scheduled and unscheduled traffic, a rail link can only carry scheduled traffic. And we cannot run trains from everywhere to everywhere, so even if you refuse to accept that a bus can be better than a train, you must recognize that a highway is better to have than a rail link.

4/20/2009 1:15:06 AM

i realize this is light rail, thus a little different, but rail can be done well (and more efficiently) than buses if done right (and if used):

Quote :

"However, Calgary's LRT ridership is much higher than any comparable U.S. city at 300,000 passengers per weekday, and as a result its efficiency of capital is also much higher. Its capital costs were ? that of the San Diego system, a comparably sized one in the U.S., while its ridership is approximately twice as high. Thus, Calgary's capital cost per weekday rider is less than one quarter that of San Diego. Its operating costs are also lower. A typical C-Train vehicle costs only $163 per hour to operate, and since it averages 600 passengers per operating hour,[29] Calgary Transit estimates that its LRT operating costs are only 27 cents per ride, versus $1.50 per ride on its buses."

but bus routes are certainly more easily changed that rail routes, so a successful transit system should incorporate both where applicable..

[Edited on April 20, 2009 at 1:29 AM. Reason : .]

4/20/2009 1:25:07 AM

^^

Are you one of those nuts who thinks the budget is a zero-sum game? I don't see why we cannot sensibly expand rail and the interstate highway system, without sacrificing one for the other.

And more so, this complaint about the rail system being a lossy enterprise is just silly. Duh, that's why the government subsidizes the system. It's called 'infrastructure' for a reason. It's not a private-sector business.

4/20/2009 1:51:09 AM

^^ Interesting. Well then, so one light rail line has managed to not operate at a huge loss. I'm curious how they did it. And I'm curious what they mean by capital costs, do they mean costs? Or do they mean the up-front costs? Especially there, where the line is being built for exclusive passenger use and therefore cannot defray any of the expensive construction costs (right-of-way, construction, track maintenance). So, if the numbers are correct and they can operate the rail line for less operating cost per passenger, I would still point out that it would still be losing money if the interest and principle on the bonds used to build the line were included in the calculation.

Quote :

"Are you one of those nuts who thinks the budget is a zero-sum game? I don't see why we cannot sensibly expand rail and the interstate highway system, without sacrificing one for the other."

I cannot imagine why you would think so, but cities do not have that kind of pricing power. Afterall, there are lots of good road projects to build that are not being built. As such, if the money could be raised to spend more politically, they would have done it already. And from looking at actual transportation spending we see that is the case. California spends less building roads today than it did in the 1950s. Los Angeles used to have a high per-capita lane-mile statistic. Now, after 20 years of metro construction, Los Angeles, the freeway capital of the world, has almost half the national average, and all the traffic conjestion that implies.

So, if the budget can serve all masters, then why hasn't it?

4/20/2009 4:01:44 AM

^

I love getting lectured about California trains by a guy who lives in Fayetteville, NC. Considering that I ride trains here in, you know, California, every day for my commute, and for just plain gettin' around.

You're still projecting an idiotic budget-as-zero-sum-game mentality. Unlike you I actually had the chance to vote on expanding the California rail system, and I voted NO. The project was too ambitious to produce anything reasonable. I view L.A. as largely a lost cause in pretty much all respects. But as anyone who's actually, you know, been living here knows, there are areas of the state that benefit highly from rail and others that do not. For example: Northern California is a high-tech wonderland stuck in a vast, over-developed suburb with a very dense metropolitan city a few miles away. The suburbs are mostly accessible via rail and can be made more accessible. In fact, as I had the chance to, you know, vote on development-related propositions in specific cities, I can tell you that a large reason why the mass transit system here is not greatly expanded has to do with NIMBY enviro-nuts, not budget concerns.

As to your final comment: again, as anyone who actually, you know, lives in California and votes here regularly knows, the problem with the budget here is precisely that people try to make it serve all masters with senseless propositions that allocate money out of the context of proper budgeting protocol. The same issues will arise in this state with infrastructure expansion be it trains, roads, schools, firehouses, or methadone clinics.

In summary: agentlion had a perfectly valid point and you poo-poo'ed it by over-generalizing some study you read to the particulars of a situation you don't know anything about. Only a damned fool would say that rail systems cannot and should not be expanded generally, without regard to particular circumstances. I generally oppose the Valhalla of Mass Transit, but I'm pragmatic enough to see that good policy requires making decisions based on actual facts on the ground.

[Edited on April 20, 2009 at 2:37 PM. Reason : foo]

4/20/2009 2:36:47 PM

Smoker4, it seems you are talking about a different subject than I am. I have been arguing against regional and interstate rail lines as proposed by agentlion above.

So, yes, I'm sure many cities can use expanding their subway and metro lines. But a city without either, or with the intention of intercity travel, should scrap such plans right now.

I referenced cities because what amtrak currently runs is a poor example of what would happen if they started building a massive high-speed rail network, where-as some cities do present a good example.

Quote :

"You're still projecting an idiotic budget-as-zero-sum-game mentality."

As you get confused when I mix examples, I will refrain from any further discussion of city budgets. So, under what public choice theory are you operating? While I recognize that many politicians use the sacred cow of rail to argue for expanded budgets, and get them, once the construction is over the public attention wanes and the politicians move on to the next attention booster, allocating funds accordingly, leaving the rail behind for the department of transportation to manage with available funds. This is generally how I have seen it operate. Once the excitement is over, budgets fall back and the department of transportation cuts back on all transportation sectors to meet the budget, cutting back on promised rail service, previous bus service, and scheduled road maintenance. This is just my perception from a few instances, it is not a rule and I would not intend to present it as such. But your assertion that there is no element of zero-sum-budgeting taking place in government is equally absurd. What politician is going to sacrifice their pet projects in the name of filling potholes?

[Edited on April 20, 2009 at 4:52 PM. Reason : ,.,]

4/20/2009 4:48:54 PM

^

I am not confused. You are confused because you've apparently never been to California and have no concept of how this state works, geographically, or its rail systems, or to what I was referring when I said I ride trains. The rail systems that I ride _are regional_. Guess what? One is called BART. Bay AREA Rapid Transit. It covers the entire _region_. I also ride Caltrain. Guess what? Regional. It covers Gilroy to SF. Multiple cities, get it?

I am not going to argue about public choice theory with you because you really just don't have the slightest factual basis for this discussion. You look like a fool. My experience is entirely with regional transit, I have direct experience and knowledge--as do thousands of my colleagues--of where regional transit would be greatly enhanced as would the productivity of one of America's most innovative areas. And it is most certainly not limited to individual cities. Please do your homework, then post.

[Edited on April 21, 2009 at 11:45 PM. Reason : foo]

4/21/2009 11:44:44 PM

hopefully this is sign that DADT may be on its way out:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/05/a-soldier-fights-back.html

5/8/2009 12:01:34 PM

^^ I go to california often and I have ridden BART on several occasions. You have said nothing to imply that the regional mass-transit lines you mention are either high speed or anything but bottomless money pits.

Quote :

"Three light-rail lines have been added to L.A. county's transit system in the last 20 years. Together, these cost $2.5 billion in capital costs, they serve about 125,000 passengers per day and account for a fiscal loss of approximately $252 million per year"

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mta3sep03,0,1246224.story?coll=la-home-local

That is enough up-front cost to buy every rider a new car and enough fiscal loss to buy their fuel every day for the journey.

Caltrain is about 77.4 miles long. BART is 104 miles. Neither are high speed track, and even combined compare in no way to the many thousands of miles of track Obama wants to build. As such, you and your worship of california rail fail on every count.

5/9/2009 2:36:37 AM

this is the only twitter i follow

because this guy has it all figured out

i'm gonna vote him as pres o dent

http://twitter.com/chefrbme25

5/9/2009 11:14:57 AM