This is funny: In five hours I have to be at the V.A. Medical Center for some pre-op tests for my coming open heart surgery a week from today. And here I sit, starting to write, a task that will take at least a couple hours, if I keep it short. For me, short means about 1,000 words. But I’m gonna do this anyway.
And just a note on the heart, my heart, the one that has been scheduled for some new arteries: it was exactly 13 years ago today I suffered my first, nearly fatal, heart attack. It was a myocardial infarction and once I was reasonably lucent the cardiologist, whose name I can’t recall, told me I would be having bypass surgery within ten years. Well, it’s been 13 years so I’ve gotten 30% more life out of the old ticker than was predicted!
If the doctors doing the surgery next Monday can be believed, they expect I’ll get about 15 years with the new plumbing. Okay, and if I can get an extra 30%, that gives me another five years! I just may live well into my 70’s! Yeah baby!
But cardiac chatter wasn’t on my mind … well, it’s always on my mind lately, but the topic that had me going off was the “levitating train from Disneyland to Las Vegas.” Congressman Eric Cantor was on Meet the Press Sunday and of course he mocked the plan, which has funding included in the Obama budget.
Here’s the hypocrisy and I didn’t know this until I Googled it: the high speed rail that will connect Orange and Los Angeles Counties in California to Las Vegas, Nevada, has already had funding approved — by President Bush. Yep. Just about one year ago. But it gets sweeter. It had initially been approved in 2005, but due to technical errors in the wording of the bill, it had been delayed for three years.
You don’t say.
What’s the difference between 2006 and 2007? Well, other than the two branches of government are controlled by the Democrats, nothing.
The egg is on the face of Republicans as well, mainly because the rail line would service locations in Orange County, one of the most conservative locations in the nation. It isn’t just Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada pushing for this funding, it’s the local chapters of the Republican Party in Orange County as well.
Now they are listening to Republican after Congressional Republican bash and mock what Orange County Republicans consider to be a jobs creating program that will ease the traffic on I-15 which turns into a virtual parking lots twice a week: on Fridays when hundreds of thousands of Southern Californians drive to Las Vegas (and Laughlin) for the weekend and then on Sundays when those same Southern California residents make the drive home.
My brother Carl and I have made that trip more times than I can remember and believe me, for most of the 300-plus miles, traffic is either extremely thick or stopped for long periods.
The Maglev, as it is called, will not only spawn thousands of jobs, it will give us Southern Californians an alternative to either driving or flying to Sin City. If I can get to Vegas in two hours or less, by all means, build the train.
Now I’m really tired so I’m going to bed.
TheForkesReport