DISQUS

AMERICAblog: Britain to vastly expand railways while US wastes half a billion a day in Iraq

  • Dave of the Jungle · 1 year ago
    Go Paleolithic with John McCain!
  • KarenMrsLloydRichards · 1 year ago
    If ONLY it were just half a million dollars a day, sugar pie! It's more like 2 BILLION dollars a week... (before long-term costs like lifetime vet's care, interest on war-related debt, etc.)
  • Nigel Elliott · 1 year ago
    We need high-speed rail service to get people out of cars. LA-SF in two hours?
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High_Sp...
  • stevie314159 · 1 year ago
    It's more like half-a-BILLION, Dr. Evil.
  • FunMe · 1 year ago
    High oil prices, no insurance, food price creeping higher, jobs tight, infrastrucure barely standing, risk of your children going to illegal wars, etc.

    And yet there are some people who still want McSame?

    Do they want fries with it, too?

    When will AMERICA WAKE UP?!!!


    Geez!
  • bkmn · 1 year ago
    And just how much of the total for the war is going to KBR, Blackwater and the other no-bid contractors?
  • Randall916 · 1 year ago
    "We've wasted over $500 billion"

    Sadly, it's much MUCH more than that. A lot of the programs are 'off-budget'. There are endless black holes like the various propaganda media outlets we are beaming into the country. Those cost over $27,000,000 alone. We are not going to find out the real details until decades from now (if ever).
  • LasloPratt · 1 year ago
    Here's the thing -- we're wasting half a billion a day in Iraq precisely so that money cannot be used for things like improving public transportation. Or schools. Or roads. Or bridges. Or levees.

    Matt Taibbi summed it up brilliantly a while back:

    Operation Iraqi Freedom, it turns out, was never a war against Saddam ­Hussein's Iraq. It was an invasion of the federal budget, and no occupying force in history has ever been this efficient.
  • tofubo · 1 year ago
    you're making hundreds of millions selling 4 decade old munitions to the afgans, what do you list on your myspace page ??

    I'm currently working in the import/export field and practicing professional massage therapy.





    of course

    http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2008/03/d...
    http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/...

    oh, and my democratic rep voted for the $165 large and the fisa bill




    yeah
  • Bush_Bites · 1 year ago
    Related:


    United Airlines told its pilots Monday that it intends to eliminate about 950 pilot jobs, starting at summer's end, when the Chicago-based carrier will begin grounding aircraft in large numbers.

    http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/chicago-un...
  • Õ¿Õ · 1 year ago
    Commercial airline industry is going under. Good riddance. Polluting my air. People flying hither and thither like they're THAT important.
  • Bush_Bites · 1 year ago
    Related:

    Amtrak set records in May, both for the number of passengers it carried and for ticket revenues — all the more remarkable because May is not usually a strong travel month.

    But the railroad, and its suppliers, have shrunk so much, largely because of financial constraints, that they would have difficulty growing quickly to meet the demand.

    Many of the long-distance trains are already sold out for some days this summer. Want to take Amtrak’s daily Crescent train from New York to New Orleans? It is sold out on July 5, 6, 7 and 8. Seattle to Vancouver, British Columbia, on July 5? The train is sold out, but Amtrak will sell you a bus ticket.

    “We’re starting to bump up against our own capacity constraints,” said R. Clifford Black, a spokesman for Amtrak.

    ...........

    Last year Senator Frank Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, and others won overwhelming Senate approval for a bill that would offer the states 80 cents for every 20 cents they spend on new intercity passenger rail service, the same as the match offered for highway projects.

    The House passed a bill with the same provision by a veto-proof margin earlier this month. The bill will soon go to a conference committee, but the White House is threatening to veto it because it wants the passenger rail system to be turned over to private operators.

    ............

    Amtrak’s fortunes also hinge on who wins the White House; Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee, was a staunch opponent of subsidies to Amtrak when he was chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. Barack Obama, the probable Democratic nominee, was a co-sponsor of the Senate version of the bill to provide an 80/20 financing match.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/21/business/21am...
  • Õ¿Õ · 1 year ago
    Blame the sorry bush voters who continue to support this. Hey fundies and other assorted whackjobs we're so sick of, we're going under here and that includes you if you haven't noticed yet. Fucking morons. And the Alliance Defense Fund is fighting the Supreme Court in California and to remove Playboy magazines in PXs on military bases.
  • Gary SF · 1 year ago
    Nigel, you beat me to it. We will be voting on our high-speed rail project here in California probably within the next 12 months. With a project cost of 30 billion, Californians will vote the fund the first 33%. If that passes, the Federal government will match the second third, and the final third has not been specified.
  • Õ¿Õ · 1 year ago
    That's nice and all but those of us who live spread out, we're fucked.
  • Õ¿Õ · 1 year ago
    Hey fundies, people are dying now. Actual real live human beings are dying because of the rising costs of fuel and the costs of food. You care about that? No, of course not. As long as you can bash gays.
  • Andrew · 1 year ago
    When it comes to crisis management the US ranks 0 on a scale of 1 to 10. We've had over 30 years to do something about energy and all any president or Congress has done is give the American people lip service while raking in huge profits as well as PAC money to further the illusion that government is working for the people and not the other way around.
    Other countries world wide have been proactive while we watch our bridges crumble, our roads wash away, our electrical infrastructure fall apart and the cost of energy go through the roof. Obama talks about change, but when it comes to Washington, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
  • Bush_Bites · 1 year ago
    Carter formed the Department of Energy, and Reagan took a meat axe to it as soon as he got into the White House.
  • Õ¿Õ · 1 year ago
    I'm sharpening my spear. Fuck a pitchfork.
  • Vince in Cedar Rapids · 1 year ago
    If John McCain is elected, I will lose my remaining faith in the American people. If we vote for 4 more years of the same, then we are clearly on an unstoppable downward spiral and lack the intelligence we once had.
  • Bush_Bites · 1 year ago
    Looks like California's plan to put high-speed rail on the November ballot may have hit a couple snags:

    http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_9487041

    http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/bottleneck/2008...

    Hope they iron them out.
  • Õ¿Õ · 1 year ago
    The wingnuts are waiting for an attack on Iran or a nuclear attack on a city here to fix everything.
  • Nigel Elliott · 1 year ago
  • Õ¿Õ · 1 year ago
    Anyway, added some other objects that came to me for my ritual garden but it doesn't improve because of the sickness out there. Until there's balance, it wont improve. It's really upsetting. The bush supporters and others have got to atone.
  • Bobby · 1 year ago
    John, I interviewed a pair of Iraq vets tonight and they don't think it's a waste at all. They said we have to stay there until the mission is complete.

    However, I don't think this country will support a draft, which is what we will need if we stay there indefinitely.

    It's a mess.
  • Busboy · 1 year ago
    Atone for what, GG? The fact that democrats and a third of the repubs have prevented us from developing nuclear, oil, gas and wind energy in this country for over 30 years?
  • Õ¿Õ · 1 year ago
    Hey there. Glad to see you posting again, asshole.
  • Busboy · 1 year ago
    Ride that bike, old son!
  • Barb_in_DC · 1 year ago
    AHEM. It was the "saintly" Margaret Thatcher who took an ax to what had been a wonderful and extremely useful rail system throughout the British Isles. It looks like they are finally getting around to correcting her dreadful mistake. Big Government is sinful, ya know?
  • vegasbaby · 1 year ago
    OT:
    IRAQI POLITICIAN MURDERS U.S. SOLDIERS IN BROAD DAYLIGHT!!!!

    BAGHDAD — A disgruntled local official opened fire Monday on U.S. soldiers attending a municipal council meeting southeast of Baghdad, killing two of them and wounding four other Americans, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

    ho - hum…wonder if the corporate media will report this???

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ 2008/ 06/ 23/ iraqi-councilman-kills-us_n_108773.html

    June 23rd, 2008 at 10
  • jr · 1 year ago
    everything is "communism: to the repubs except ethnically cleansing the middle east
  • MichaelS · 1 year ago
    My God, what short memories we have... This is exactly what did in the Soviet Union. It crumbled under the economic weight of its own military spending. But we learned nothing from that.
  • mirth · 1 year ago
    But they'll have a dozen CCTV cameras in every car watching every move of every passenger.
  • RedMA · 1 year ago
    Ummm, aren't the Europeans already paying more than double what we are for gas? How are they better off than we are, or do you want us to pay $8 a gallon so we can be as "well off" as they are?

    And $500 mil a day? Can anyone find out how much we're wasting on the war on poverty? The one started by L.B.J. back in the 60's?

    Not to belittle the sacrifices endured by today's milirary, but America lost tens of thousands of soldiers in the Civil War in several battles that only lasted a FEW DAYS.

    And if you think Big Oil is only greasing the palms of the Republicans, I've got some beautiful beachfront property I need to sell in Central Tennessee.
  • cab02149 · 1 year ago
    And they will walk away, free and richer. You call that a mark of a society with its values in order? We got what we deserved and if I didn't know better, I think it will get repeated. Memories are VERY short in the US of A. Democracy? Free enterprise? A crock of shit if I may say so.