So I watched the "Atlas Shrugged" movie trailer...

... over at Instapundit. And when I got to the end, I said "Part One"?! People are supposed to put up with more than one movie full of that stuff?! It was all I could do to look at 2 and a half minutes of that sloshy melodrama.

Is that opus really the rich repository of conservative values it purports to be? Quite aside from the flabby aesthetics, we're supposed to get all righteous about — of all things — building railroads?

And, no, I haven't read the book. I don't read long, badly written novels. A simple summary of the idea Rand strains to propound is quite enough for me. As a general rule, I stay away from novels that were written to make some big political or philosophical point. Writing that last sentence, I realized I needed to quote something Vladimir Nabokov said about art. Googling, I came to this old article by Allen Barra in Salon — "Reading 'Lolita' in Alabama" — and I'm delighted to see that Barra brings up Ayn Rand in the first paragraph:

I knew of only one other writer who inspired such an odd cult among high schoolers, Ayn Rand, who, like Nabokov, was a Russian émigré with an intense hatred of communism. Aside from that, the two could not have been more different. Rand's novels were the kind of transparent philosophical tracts that Nabokov loathed as much as he loathed Marxism. The similarities between the Nabokov and Rand cults was creepy; even more creepy was that I almost never came across anyone who read both of them.

Put me on the Nabokov side of that dichotomy. Anyway, here's what I was looking for from Nabokov:

"Why did I write any of my books, after all? For the sake of pleasure, for the sake of the difficulty. I have no social purpose, no moral message; I've no general ideas to exploit, I just like composing riddles with elegant solutions."... "I don't give a damn for the group... the community, the masses, and so forth ... there can be no question that what makes a work of fiction safe from larvae and rust is not its social importance but its art, only its art." And: "I have neither the intent nor the temperament to be a moralist or satirist." Mediocrity, he thought, "thrives on ideas"... "general ideas, the big, sincere ideas which permeate a so-called great novel, and which, in the inevitable long run, amount to bloated topicalities stranded like dead whales."

Anxieties over the the high-speed "train to nowhere" in California.

Reported in the NYT.

I need to do some year-end type features for this blog, like Althouse's Biggest Flip-Flop.

I'm surprise to even see that I wrote this. Man, nobody called me on that, back when I was a big 1-issue voter in the Wisconsin gubernatorial race. Looking at the comments over on that first post, I'm thinking maybe you guys flipped me!

"The Ohio and Wisconsin projects aren't even worthy of being called high-speed rail, as Wisconsin's average speed was projected to be just 59 mph..."

"... and Ohio's an even more lethargic 38.5 mph. ... New transportation technologies are successful when they are faster, more convenient, and less expensive than the technologies they replace. High-speed rail is slower than flying, less convenient than driving, and at least five times more expensive than either one. It is only feasible with heavy taxpayer subsidies and even then it will only serve a tiny portion of the nation's population."

Randal O'Toole at Cato.

More opinion collected here.

"The nearly $1.2 billion in federal funds for high-speed rail projects that newly elected governors in Ohio and Wisconsin rejected..."

"... has been redirected to other states, with New York receiving up to $7.3 million of the amount. The money was redistributed to states in proportion to their initial high-speed rail awards...."

Wisconsin and Ohio... such important swing states in the upcoming 2012 elections.

Did it not occur to them to not spend the money? Why the insatiable urge to spend? My mother used to say, "That money is burning a hole in your pocket." But that can't be what's going on here, because they don't have any money.

Christmas trains.

At Olbrich Gardens, here in Madison.

The high-speed rail boondoggle at its worst — in California.

Via Instapundit, Reason has the nauseating details:

The California High Speed Rail Authority is committed to breaking ground on a leg of the train that will serve passengers between the unincorporated town of Borden and the half-incarcerated town of Corcoran.

Corcoran!

Whether you call it the train from nowhere or the train to nowhere, nobody will be riding it even when it’s done. That’s not libertarian cant: The actual plan for the $4.15 billion leg is that upon completion it will sit idle until other sections of track are completed.

$4.15 billion!

Background: The CHSRA needs to break ground by September 2012 or lose $2.25 billion in federal funds. The U.S. Department of Transportation has for reasons of its own favored the sparsely populated Central Valley for this first leg of the thinly imagined high speed rail project. 

Reasons of its own? Can we get an investigation?

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, we just elected a new governor whose central election promise was to say no to $810 million connect Madison and Milwaukee by high-speed rail:

Scott Walker has made no secret of his aversion to high-speed trains, but before he goes any further with his plans to derail the planned Milwaukee-Madison line, Walker might consider some earlier chapters in Wisconsin's transportation history. They indicate that the governor-elect could be putting his state in reverse.

As long as there has been a Wisconsin, residents have labored mightily to establish connections with each other and with the world beyond the state's borders. Although disputes often arose in working out the details, the general trend was unmistakable....

Connections! We're all about relationships among people.

The idea seems oddly nostalgic at first - why build passenger trains in the 21st century? - but it actually fits an emerging settlement pattern. Not in my lifetime but perhaps in my grandchildren's, and for better or worse, an interconnected megalopolis will sprawl from Benton Harbor, Mich., to Minneapolis-St. Paul. As the empty spaces fill in, there will be a demand for some form of transport that's faster than cars but has more frequent stops (and fewer exasperating waits) than airplanes.

The columnist — John Gurda in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel — is imagining a megalopolis in the future and telling us what people then will want. But people don't even want trains now. We drive cars. Or we take planes. There's also the bus. True, a bus doesn't go at a speed in between the speed of a car and a plane, but come on. Pick one. Road or air.

But, anyway, we have a nice train in Madison:



A train and a Christmas tree in the Wisconsin State Capitol.

"High-speed rail may be among the casualties of last week's midterm elections."

Says NPR and I rejoice.

The moves to oppose the Obama administration's efforts to get high-speed trains whisking through some parts of the country appear to be the first of many fights between Democrats and newly elected Republicans who campaigned on promises to rein in spending....

High-speed trains whisking...

... dreams of fast trains full of passengers zooming through the Midwest....

Whisking, zooming choo-choos are not our dream. Now leave us alone. We drive cars. Face reality.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood leans on 2 new GOP governors about the high-speed rail project.

This is about our new Wisconsin governor, Scott Walker, and the new Ohio Governor John Kasich La Hood says — understandably — that the stimulus money for high-speed rail can't be used for other things. Walker and Kasich — understandably — are fighting to keep the money and put it into highway construction and that sort of thing.

No! We voted no on the high-speed rail!

Outrage!

Transportation officials have confirmed that Wisconsin and federal administrators have signed a deal to commit the state to spending all $810 million of its federal stimulus cash on a proposed Milwaukee-to-Madison high-speed rail line.

Intensely undemocratic underhandedness on the day we voted for the candidate, Scott Walker, who promised to shut down this project.

But Cari Anne Renlund, executive assistant to state Transportation Secretary Frank Busalacchi, said Gov. Jim Doyle's administration was only following its original plan....

Renlund said state and federal staffers worked out the deal over the weekend because they were busy with other duties and that was the only time they could meet. She said the agreement was not publicly announced because it had just been reached, but it could be announced later.

"Peace Train" ... "Crazy Train" ... "Love Train."

At the Rally to Restore Sanity — or, I should say, on the Rally to Restore Sanity, because I'm watching C-SPAN — it was great to see Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam) singing his great old song "Peace Train." It was also amusing to have Ozzy Osbourne barge in with "Crazy Train" and okay for the O'Jays to resolve matters with "Love Train."

From my TV perspective, it looked like a huge crowd on the Mall. It was overwhelming white. And — I'm not lying — I wrote "overwhelmingly" before I remembered that "overwhelmingly white" had become a hilariously common way to refer to crowds drawn to conservative rallies.

The crowd also looked pretty young and disproportionately male. Because it's comedy?

UPDATE: Ed Morissey has video of the Cat Stevens performance and a good summary of the controversy — which also comes up in the comments to my post — about presenting Stevens as an emissary of peace when he spoke with some degree of approval of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie.

UPDATE 2: Tobin Harshaw collects opinion about the larger event.

"High-Speed Rail Goes Off the Tracks in Wisconsin."

We cheered out loud over that headline.

Milwaukee County executive Scott Walker, the Republican candidate for governor, has denounced the train as a Big Government boondoggle, and has vowed to send the money [$810 million] back to Washington if he's elected. He has even launched a website, www.notrain.com, attacking Obama and his opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, for supporting the new line. Walker and Barrett don't agree on much, but they agree that high-speed rail is a defining issue in their campaign.

It's hard being a lefty in Madison these days.

You live on the east side, you support Barack Obama and all that hope and change... and high speed rail... in your backyard?!

"I think there will be some things that will be upsetting, kind of on a personal level. Like maybe you've enjoyed your backyard in a certain way or there's a tree you've enjoyed looking at. Maybe it's not your right to use them, but you've just had it there and benefitted from it, and then it changes."...

[T]here are concerns about the fate of several pedestrian and bicycle crossings, both sanctioned and unofficial ones. Right now, he says, the railroad tracks are not considered a barrier for anyone, from "10-year-olds to 90-year-olds," to cross and the freight trains pose little danger. But high-speed rail is a different animal, and the probability for fencing all the way along the tracks is high....

"I think people were more concerned about getting to Walgreens than getting to Chicago"....

Yeah, why do you need to go to Chicago? Compared to strolling around your own neighborhood, getting to Chicago is nothing.

For Ken Fitzsimmons, the Ohio-Farwell crossing is a key one, as is one on Corry Street. If both are closed, he and his immediate neighbors will be "boxed in," with no access to the west side of the neighborhood except by going east to Milwaukee Street first.

"We're a two-person household with one car, so we definitely at almost all times are dedicated to some alternate transportation," he says.

Ironically, the high speed rail is presented as an alternative to driving to Milwaukee, as if it's going to reverse global warming, but in real life, people will have to drive more, just to get around their own neighborhood.

[Ken Fitzsimmons] jokes that he and wife "aren't becoming Republicans" because of the high-speed rail line - referring to Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker's pledge to stop it from happening. 

Why not? What's stopping you? A fear of change?

Good lord, the rail line is a disaster — a disaster justifying single-issue voting this time.

"The train is coming through as far as we're concerned... We're not putting in any effort to stop it because it could be a really good thing... I think the important point I was getting at is if they're really receptive to some of these ideas, we've got ideas. We're not trying to stop this train, we're just trying to limit its possible damaging effects."

Why not stop the train? I don't get it. You just have to accept everything that's jammed down your throat by the party you've been faithful to all these years? It could be a good thing? Maybe it will work out for the best? Why would you support an immensely intrusive change that affects your daily way of life? Why isn't the presumption against change — or at least against drastic new things that look terrible? Why this trust?

Why is obeisance to a political party compelling you to defy everything that your common sense is screaming?

Ron Paul! You need to come speak at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Yesterday, after the faculty meeting, I walked down Bascom Hill, which was extremely well-posted with student activist posters....


(Enlarge.)

... including this one, which is horrifying for so many reasons...



"Fast Trains Are Cool." As if the government should provide us with everything, even coolness. Big Brother loves you, and Big Brother will also supply the coolness that's currently missing in your gray little life. Wow! We can go fast. Train go fast. Student not think about who pay for cool fast train. Ride train. Train cool.

I kept walking, down to library mall, where I was accosted by a guy with a clipboard, a sort of campus character I would normally discreetly evade, but he was part of a group of students I'd noticed earlier, telling people it was Constitution Day, and therefore we ought to sign a petition to bring Ron Paul to campus to speak, so I stop...



... and even sign the petition. He tells me Ron Paul has said that if students collect 1000 signatures, he'll come to the campus to speak. I ask him if he's finding many conservative or libertarian students on this campus. He admits that there don't seem to be too many, but that he does think the students these days are pretty open-minded and interested in hearing different points of view. Is it possible that the new generation of UW students is more flexible and less rigidly committed to left/liberal ideology? He thought so. I asked if I could take his picture, and I got the picture above, and that sparked this convergence...



... and I asked if it was okay if I blogged them, and the answer was "Blog?!" as if it were 2004 again. I felt young. Cool. On my own. Without a fast train or a Big Brother. And I'm thinking: Ron Paul! Come to the University of Wisconsin! I need to blog this to help get Ron Paul to the University of Wisconsin to talk to our possibly really open-minded young people before they get swept too far by the empty promises of cool things. Before they get... railroaded.

Scott Walker on the high-speed rail line between Madison and Milwaukee: "I will put a stop to this boondoggle the day I take office."

Ed Morrissey says:

Only fifty-five permanent jobs? [For $810 million. $14.5 million per job.] Wisconsin shouldn’t be the only state demanding an explanation of this boondoggle. And we thought that spending $300K or more for every claimed job “saved or created” was bad. Porkulus looks like bargain basement in comparison.

Things singers sing that they do that they actually never do.

I'm starting a list:

1. Hop a train.
2. ...
3. ...

I need some help with this one. I don't want fantasies, but real things that are intended to make the singers sound gritty and deeply in touch with life, but you know damned well they don't do.

(Here's the song that was playing....)

"I guess she dropped her purse. Except you never do that. Never."

The 82-year-old father of the woman who died after jumped onto the subway track, supposedly to retrieve a dropped bag. "It’s too late now... I’ll be praying for the rest of my life, until I die."

The woman, Rose M. Markos, was a graduate of NYU School of Law.

Children playing with toy trains and play money...

... or no... real money. Our money.



And don't get me started about the Madison kids.

As long as we're spending money, I love this $8 billion for high-speed rail lines.

Especially the one that connects Madison, Wisconsin to Milwaukee, and Milwaukee to Chicago and Minneapolis. Thanks for the $810 million for Wisconsin.

Much as I hate the proposals to add light rail commuter trains to Madison, I would love some great train lines connecting our midwestern cities. I don't think people will (or can) give up their cars and use rail lines to travel between home and downtown, but I do think people will use rail instead of cars or planes to travel distances in the 50 to 300 mile range. I hate dealing with the airport, and I'm afraid of flying, so I always drive to go to Chicago or Milwaukee. I'd love to use a great train — and I'd make those trips into the city a lot more often.

***

Here's the White House press release.

This historic $8 billion investment is expected to create or save tens of thousands of jobs over time in areas like track-laying, manufacturing, planning and engineering, and rail maintenance and operations.  Over 30 rail manufacturers, both domestic and foreign, have agreed to establish or expand their base of operations in the United States if they are hired to build America’s next generation high-speed rail lines – a commitment the Administration secured to help ensure new jobs are created here at home.

Domestic and foreign? But "new jobs are created here at home." What proportion of the jobs are created here at home?

"Sounds like... another great town (Madison is really a great place from my experience) is about to be screwed up..."

"... just like Portland has."