China is moving out!
Over a year ago, in Transportation Choices, I pointed out one glaring difference between candidates McCain and Obama: the difference in their support for improving America’s rail system. McCain was against it; Obama was for it.
It would be nice if we had the money now … but the Bush Depression has done for that.
Newsweek magazine, however, has done a nice piece on how China is ramping up their own rail system. A few quotes:
“Over the next three years, (China) will pour some $300 billion into its railways.”
“Government investment has created something of an economic miniboom.”
“Far bigger economic effects are down the line.”
What have we spent $300 billion on in the last three years? Fighting wars in the Middle East, that’s what! Actually, since 2001, Iraq has cost more that twice the amount of money China is going to spend on something that Newsweek compares to the Transcontinental Railroad or the Freeway system here. But the idiot Bush did what his daddy wouldn’t do: bog us down in a land war half way around the world.
China also holds the world speed record for commercial high speed trains … and their high speed trains go well over twice as fast as ours.
Still think that America is the world’s superpower?
I’m tired right now, so I’m not (probably) going to phrase all this very well. But I want to get something said about this so I’m going to do the best I can, under the circumstances.
No, I don’t think we are the world’s superpower. I think we as Americans have a “grandiose” problem. We are so used to being a superpower (which at one time we probably were in a lot of ways) and we are so lazy and so egotistical, that we don’t look at all the ways we are losing ground and all the ways other nations are gaining ground. I am fearful for us because we don’t wake up in so many ways – the rest of the world is so ahead of us in so many ways. And we just go down our merry path, humming a song and being oblivious.
This is all in the same vein as our thinking about our human-ness. We think we are at the top of the animals chain also – that we are “heads and tails” above the other animals. Well, I think we are just a part of the process of EVERYTHING living together on this planet – and WE are messing up the whole order of things because of, AGAIN, our egotistical attitude and our laziness.
So, that’s what my tired brain thinks about all of that!
And I also hope idiot Bush fries in Hell – or in Heck, as we in Utah say.
Hmmm … I’m not sure Hell exists. But Utah sure does. So frying in Heck might be the worse punishment. Sure! I hope he fries in Heck too!