Europe has certain zones where high speed rail makes sense. Those also exist here, such as the Acela route, also perhaps Miami to Orlando to Tampa Bay, LA to San Diego, and Dallas - Fort Worth. However, extending high speed rail across the US makes no economic sense now, and would place the government into direct competition with private commercial transport. It is unlikely that high speed rail will become economically viable on a nationwide basis given the huge costs of creating dedicated, isolated rails on such a broad spread basis. While I strongly support high speed rail in high density, closely located urban zones, especially where urban mass transit exists to get people to and from the train stations, it doesn't seem either economically viable or practicable in other locations.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the text of Mr. Barlow's speech - but the part cited by the author doesn't inspire confidence in his insight. California's issues are a microcosm of the federal problems, exacerbated by the initiative process. The state has become governed by mass vote via initiatives. In effect, every single person has become a special interest, or at the least easily manipulated by them. That process is not dominated by the net, thought it has slightly worsened the severity of the problem. With initiatives having hamstrung the budget process, the government is unable to flex the budget to accommodate economic reality, or reduce a budget bloated with special interest projects without now cutting vital services. "The Edge" isn't the answer, it is a large part of the problem. The reason we have a representative government is that the people who created the Constitution saw that what was needed was people who could look at the overall picture and set priorities and see them through. We need to do what the founders expected of us, elect intelligent people of good conscience with the courage to set priorities and actually make decisions regardless of the consequences to their political future. This is true at both the state and federal level. Too often, we elect people based on a beauty contest, asking too few questions and demanding too few answers, and then we fail to let them do the job we elected them to do. Governance from the "Edge" would be a surrender to chaos.

Many people here are focused on the Iran/Israel connection, but what about our understandings with the Saudis? If I recall correctly, there are agreements with the Saudis (a Sunni majority nation) to "protect" them from Iran (a Shia majority nation), and there is no love lost between them. If Iran attacks Israel using nukes, that is an attack on Jerusalem - an attack anywhere on Israel would have major negative effects on Jerusalem, the second most holy site in Islam after Mecca. The regional power play is mostly between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis "condemned" the last attack by Israel on Iranian reactor facilities, but apart from that did nothing. Iran uses Hezbollah as a proxy against Israel, to good effect, without nukes. Isn't Saudi Arabia the real strategic target of Iran's nuke program? What say you all?

The Google translation is very hard to read, so I suggest the Reuters equivalent: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessioni d=R0RTVWKMK1DIWCRBAEZSFEY?type=oddlyEnoughNews&sto ryID=6418334