Friday 26th of April 2024
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hope over hopeless .....

hope over hopeless .....

What began for Obama two years ago as a long-shot presidential bid launched in Abraham Lincoln's shadow in Springfield, Ill., ended with another tribute to the 16th president, Obama's political idol. His 10-car train retraced the route Lincoln took to the capital before he assumed the presidency in 1861.

Obama stopped to deliver speeches in Philadelphia, Wilmington, Del., and Baltimore, often referring to the spirit of Lincoln and the Founding Fathers.

"We are here today not simply to pay tribute to our first patriots but to take up the work that they began," Obama said.

http://www.truthout.org/011809Y

onion soup

From The New York Times

The Remaking of America

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

At the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency in January 2001, the Web site The Onion declared: “Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is over.”

That was supposed to be satire, but in retrospect it proved a shrewd analysis. One measure of the bleak trajectory of the last eight years is that today The Onion looks equally astute when it says of the latest transition: “Black man given nation’s worst job.”

caboose to be upgraded...

From the NYT

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Thursday highlighted his ambition for the development of high-speed passenger rail lines in at least 10 regions, expressing confidence in the future of train travel even as he acknowledged that the American rail network, compared to the rest of the world’s, remains a caboose.

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Trains have a great advantage on planes. Trains usually take you to city centres while airports are at least ten miles (often 30 miles) away. Sydney is an exception where the airport is only 9 kms from the CBD. But there, public transport and convoluted roadways full of traffic lights, to and from the airport, make up for this unusual short distance.

see toon at top.