Following on the excellent diary by BruceMcF, I thought I'd add some of the analysis I've done previously about a potential high-speed rail system in this country. My analysis covers all of North America, and organizes the largest cities of the country into high-speed rail corridors. Then going by size of the counties in and adjacent to the relevant cities, I sketched out a phased implementation of each corridor over a 50-year period that starts with the highest-population cities and expands phase-by-phase to include smaller cities and connections between corridors.

First, a picture of the end-product of my system, which looks a heck of a lot like BruceMcF's sketch with more details added. The one big difference is that I didn't select routes over the Rockies, because those routes are harder to plan.

[Map from Microsoft Streets, edited using MS Paint, click for larger image.]

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

Wrong, Mr. President.

"We got a lot of rebuilding to do.... the good  news is and it's hard for some to see it now but out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic gulf coast... out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- the guy lost his entire house -- there's going to be fantastic house. I look forward to sitting on the porch. Out of New Orleans is going to come that great city again."

This man is out of touch and making light of a national tragedy.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, George W. Bush should be held accountable for his failures as president, and should resign. As the political opposition, we should call for that resignation in order to begin holding our government officials at all levels accountable for their failures.

More on the flipside:

Tax day is upon us, and now is as good a time as any to think about how we as a society choose to provide for our government, and how we as Democrats and progressives think and talk about taxes.

Clearly, as some other diaries have pointed out, we're losing on the issues of taxes. I think that's a sign that we have to completely rethink taxes in this country, and that the Democrats as an opposition party must offer sweeping reform of how government is funded.

The principle that I would put at the heart of this reform is the idea that taxes should expand and enrich the middle class, by only taxing wealth and income that exceeds the national average.

The right wing response to Obama's speech as being a "conservative" speech seems genuine to me. I think there's more going on than the belief in their own propaganda about liberalism and conservatism.

I think they're right. I think it was a conservative speech. But it was also a liberal speech, because in today's political climate, liberalism and conservatism aren't opposites, they're complementary. The Democratic Party is the party of both liberalism and conservatism.

As a Sunday diversion, my wife and a couple of friends were sitting around discussing which states in this country were the most lame.

We eventually decided to make our own list of all 50 states in order of lameness. I thought as a Sunday diversion for the rest of you, I'd open up the debate to you guys.

Since I posted a diary entry about my mother-in-law and her confusion about who to vote for in the Iowa caucus, I thought I'd post a follow-up.

I sent her a long e-mail with a pitch for Dean and my fairly evenhanded take on all of the candidates. It also included a link to the original diary entry with pitches for Dean.

She ended up caucusing for Dean almost inadvertently.

My mother-in-law lives in Iowa City and is planning on going to the caucuses--but she's undecided about her vote.

Knowing that I'm the family political junkie, she's asking me for information about the various candidates, because she's just getting a very superficial view from media coverage despite (or perhaps because of) being in the middle of the storm.

As a Dean supporter, it's tempting to just tell her to vote for Dean, and leave it at that, but I'm not good at the hard sale and I'd like to give her a chance to make up her own mind.

So, here's your chance. Give me substantive, pithy, one-paragraph or so pitches for your candidate, and I'll pass them on.