Tuesday, February 12, 2019

Life Catches Up To Liberalism Again

Liberals are very good at denying all the warnings smarter people try to give them over their policies. Whatever it is they want will be the greatest panacea ever and don't try to tell them otherwise because only a monster like you could doubt their intentions! Then they do it... and it implodes just like you predicted. Do they admit they were wrong all along? Hardly. After all, it's not like anyone could have seen this disaster coming, right?! The latest example of this idiocy is the high speed train between LA and San Francisco.

Think back to 2008. Remember candidate Obama promising to fix the economy by building a high speed train? Yep. It was one of the only promises he could point to. It was even going to have internet. You'd see. Obama would build this thing and we would become the leader in technology again. We would all have jobs. Kids would be smarter. The world would be perfect. All it would cost would be $33 billion and it would be ready by 2020. High speed trains from Los Angeles to San Francisco are magic!

Flash forward to 2019. Instead of being one year from completion, they now estimate this boondoogle won't be done until 2033. And that tiny $33 billion price tag is now estimated at $77 billion. What's more, this project hasn't helped our technological standing. People aren't smarter, richer or more attractive. In fact, nothing's really gotten better at all.

So California Warden Gavin Newsom announced today that he's canceling the program. Better not to throw good money after bad, he decided. Yep. Probably wants to save the money for that green agenda where we will be eliminating cars and planes within 10 years, rebuilding every building in the US, and plugging the butts of cows everywhere. I can't see anyone problems with that!

Liberalism really is a philosophy for the ignorant and the unprepared. It is a belief system that substitutes wishes for reality and only works because it has rolling amnesia which lets it disavow failures and define success downward to the point of anything other than compete failure.

Thoughts?

16 comments:

Anthony said...

At least the Dems didn't promise Mexico would pay the for train(s). If a politician is trying to talk up a big new project, expect them to greatly exaggerate the benefits and lie about the costs. That is simply the way of the world.

Bullet trains are a thing in Europe and Asia and could theoretically happen here with competent planning and enough money. The problem is they are pricey and there is no real will to pay their true costs in the US outside of environmentalists. Everybody else is satisfied with what is on offer.

People accepted and paid the low (false) cost promised but then rather than deciding to continue to spend money because they had already spent so much they decided to cancel the project. A wise end to a foolish endeavor.

tryanmax said...

It's telling how the ties between Obama and the California train got swept so completely under the rug that you're the first person I've seen mention it. Not to mention, our intrepid media has utterly failed to make any connection between the Golden State boondoggle and the Green New Deal. If we had a worthwhile media, Ocasio-Cortez would currently be fielding very hard questions about how her transcontinental bullet train would fare any better than the little train that couldn't.

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, This was Obama's economic plan. This was all he talked about in debates. And you're right, that's been completely forgotten.

As for AOC and her silly Green Deal, it's a total clusterfudge and the media likes to sidestep all the changes and retractions and Mulligans she's gone through because she's their hero and they wouldn't want people thinking she's stupid.

On the point, Bill Gates "attacked" her yesterday by saying that her tax plan won't actually touch billionaires because she doesn't understand where their money is or how they make it. Surprise.

AndrewPrice said...

Anthony, Bullet trains work in Europe because they run inter-city. The California coast is basically intra-city, which is a problem.

And California voters have proven that they love to say yes to stuff without any real analysis. Unlike Californians, Colorado voters actually say no all the time when things don't make sense.

tryanmax said...

If someone really wanted to make a go of bullet train technology in the US, they'd start by connecting several of the spread out plains cities. Commuting from Omaha to Kansas City is a thing. More remarkably, so is commuting from Omaha to Chicago.

tryanmax said...

BTW, I'm not saying it makes the most sense to start out of Omaha. I use that merely as an illustration of what I know firsthand. My underlying point is that mobility is how you solve for low density.

Tennessee Jed said...

You touch on the most vexing thing about liberals, at least to me. I have this picture of some liberals sitting around like the movie Peter Pan, holding hands and squeezing their eyes closed whil chanting “I believe in fairy’s” to bring tinker bell back to life. Yet my intellect tells me many are not stupid. This makes me think they know this stuff is bullshit, but like John Lennon singing “Imagine”, they sell it like snake oil. The one thing I give them is they are good at coming up with plausible cover on big issues. Take immigration. We know the real reason is brining new “victims” in that hopefully will at some point become voters. Yet they can couch it in terms of caring for human beings

AndrewPrice said...

Back on the Virginia thing... one of the two women who is accusing the Lt. Governor of rape also has accused an NBA player of rape.

Now, rational people like conservatives know that the chance of someone being raped in two separate incidents by famous men is basically 0%. So we would tend to dismiss this as an obvious lie. Liberals, however, have been telling themselves this make believe fiction about rape allegations that (1) a strange/incredible history by the accuser cannot mean she lacks credibility, and (2) when more than one woman makes an allegation, it must be true.

The problem they're having is that they don't want to sacrifice a Democrat to this especially because they know it sounds like utter BS. But they can't say so because that would undermine their PR about rape. Thus, they have an interesting dilemma here, and the way they seem to have chosen to get out of it is to mention the point ("she's also accused an NBA player") but to avoid connecting the obvious killer dots. Apparently they are hoping others will make the connection and kill the claim without anyone having to say so directly.

AndrewPrice said...

Jed, Liberals think highly of themselves. They always see their best motives as the ones that count and discount any less honorable motives. They also excel at compartmentalization, which allows them to hold contradictory thoughts because they just never let the two thoughts meet.

"I love A" and "I hate A" both work if you never let those two thoughts arise at the same time.

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, This isn't about transportation, it's about sending money to liberal districts. It was a jobs bailout for California

tryanmax said...

Andrew, hence the "if"

Critch said...

NYC just lost out on a bunch of jobs becasue of AOC..hey they elected her..

Rustbelt said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Rustbelt said...

So, the libs promised government-backed (jobs) protection, and then took the money and ran, leaving a trail of broken promises and an economy worse off than it was before? -even for California?
What an appropriate way to celebrate the 90th anniversary of Al trying to knock off the Northsiders in one swoop. Then again, regular people DID get booze out of the deal. So, maybe the comparison isn't really fair- to the wiseguys.

Anthony said...

AoC and other libs dissuading Amazon from setting up part of its HQ in New York is insane. It will be interesting to see how politically damaging it is. Unfortunately, anti-big business sentiment in general and anti-Amazon sentiment in particular is fairly high right now in both parties.

In terms of government control/activism we are moving closer to the (socialist, protectionist) European model. The list of successful businesses grown in Europe is a lot shorter than America's list so logically there will be negative consequences.

Also it sounds like Trump is going to declare a national emergency and do whatever he wants to do today regarding the border wall, Congress and the Constitution be damned. Its too bad Trump couldn't be bothered to negotiate with the Republican majority (and try to peel off a bit of the Dem minority) last year for the wall but decrees are a lot easier.

*Shrugs* Its not the end of democracy, just a massive step in the steady, bipartisan expansion of executive power that has occurred in the US in modern times.

AndrewPrice said...

I'm going to talk about the Amazon thing as part of the Billionaires War going on right now in a couple days. Suffice it to say, this was an interesting shot by Amazon and it seems to have hit the mark.

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