December 2008 archive

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

I’ve been following with interest the discussion of California to Las Vegas HSR at the California HSR blog.

To catch up with the state of play, before the passage of CA-Prop 1A, Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Confusion), who hails from Nevada, supports a maglev line from Las Vegas to Anaheim, and there was an article in the Las Vegas Sun indicating that Gov. Schwarzenegger and Gov. Gibbons had talked up the maglev:

Near the bottom of a news release detailing Gov. Jim Gibbons’ meeting last month with President-elect Barack Obama was the announcement that Gibbons and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had agreed to move ahead with the high-speed train project.

“Arnold and I agreed to jointly work together on the project,” said Gibbons, who is planning to travel to Sacramento to talk with Schwarzenegger about it.

Also before the passage of CA-Prop 1A was the DesertXpress proposal to build a private Rapid Passenger Rail system to capture part of the stream of cars heading up the I-15 from LA to Las Vegas. The proposed system starts at Victorville.

Victorville? Why Victorville? If you’d care to follow along, and consider how CA-Prop 1A changes the whole picture, join me after the fold.

While we’ll take Any In Depth Reports about what already should have been common knowledge on Post Traumatic Stress I do have just a couple of minor irritations with an otherwise Stellar Report on the Treatments for PTSD in the Washington Times edition today. let me get them out of the way.

The report, called VA grapples with veterans’ mental traumas, is a six page writeup of which one Audrey Hudson deserves alot of credit for reporting and apparently has done a few others this year as the previous link would show.

It starts out with the following:

The year in smorgasbord II

The Ronettes:  Be My Baby

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

Jose Maria Aguedas (1911-1969) (photo by Jose Gushiken)

I have to begin with Mariategui, the street in Cuzco, Peru, and then the man.

We decided to take a cab to find Don Francisco’s new house in Cuzco, Peru.  He is a Q’ero Shaman.  We wanted to do a shamanic ceremony with him and his wife and eat lunch with them.  We wanted to visit him at his home as he had visited us at ours in the US.  He gave us the address.  He gave us his cell number.  He gave us a land mark. We ended up calling him on the cell phone to say, “We’re parked at the church.  We don’t know where you are.”  He walked down the hill and found us.  Pointing, he said, that street is Mariategui.  That’s where the bus goes into Centro.  That’s where you have to walk.  That’s where the house is.

Did he know who Mariategui was?  Probably not.  I forgot to ask him.  I am quite certain that he never read him.

Please join me in Peru.

The year in smorgasbord I

The Beatles:  She Loves You

Uh Oh! I’m going to have to deal harshly with the King of Mud Sling, Karl Rove himself.

You see, these simple little discussions that Rove and Cheney and Bush and (enter your favorite Neo-Con here) are holding, while on their “Bush Legacy Tour:  He Was Really Good At Keeping America Safe” really need to be refuted.  Immediately.  Harshly.

So, BushCo kept the USA safe?  Well, except for that 9/11 thingy.  Oh and that anthrax thingy.  Oh, the disruption of cash flow into the average American citizens bank account.  Um, there was also that spying on Americans thing.  With a topping of torturing people.

I could go on, but you get the picture, right?  RIGHT?

Right!

As 2008 Draws To A Close The

Wars Continue

Israelis Say Strikes Against Hamas Will Continue



By TAGHREED EL-KHODARY and ETHAN BRONNER

Published: December 28, 2008

GAZA – Waves of Israeli airstrikes destroyed Hamas security facilities in Gaza on Saturday in a crushing response to the group’s rocket fire, killing more than 225 – the highest one-day toll in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in decades.

Israeli military officials said the airstrikes, which went on into the night, were the start of what could be days or even months of an effort to force Hamas to end its rocket barrages into southern Israel. The operation could include ground forces, a senior Israeli security official said.

Palestinian officials said that most of the dead were security officers for Hamas, including two senior commanders, and that at least 600 people had been wounded in the attacks.

Rupert Cornwell: Never have hopes been higher – and never has the job been tougher

On 20 January, Barack Obama will become President of the United States. His preparation has been faultless. Soon, we will learn if all the optimism is justified

Sunday, 28 December 2008

Barack Obama had it right. Postpone the first candidates’ debate, John McCain was urging last September at the height of the presidential campaign, as the White House convened an urgent summit on its bank bailout plan, a day or two before the two White House rivals were to lock horns at the University of Mississippi.

The financial collapse, McCain argued, rendered everything else superfluous. But the Democrat was unmoved: “It’s going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at a time.” Those words of Obama are contender for 2008’s understatement of the year. Never has an incoming President been confronted by as daunting an array of problems as the untried former Senator from Illinois.

USA

Silver Lining of Subprime Slips Away in Calif. Suburb



By Karl Vick

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, December 28, 2008; Page A02

STOCKTON, Calif. — Venice Circle is a loop lined with taupe homes and green lawns, a clear sign that drivers have left the freeway south of town and entered Weston Ranch, a 21st-century Levittown. The subdivision sprang up in asparagus fields 80 miles east and a world away from the urban settings buyers were delighted to escape: gritty, violent east Oakland, and grittier, deadlier Richmond nearby.

This bedroom community is populated overwhelmingly by minority families, who were lifted by a wave of easy credit over the Altamont Pass and into dream homes.